Thanks mrdally for the encouragement. I hope he's into the lil contributions I've made. It's been a lot of fun exploring and googling and exploring some more...

And...yet another problem arises with the file comparison technique of determining when you have new messages...if you have sent a text message to someone else since last check, that will count as change...meaning you get alerted for responding to a text. Then someone texts you again, meaning another alert...pretty soon the thing is ringing at whatever interval you set and you're just constantly refreshing the SMS page to check until the conversation winds down. Not really at all like receiving a 'push' alert.
There must be another way...