gtalk sms.jpg

It appears Google has once again enabled SMS send AND receive capabilities directly from Gmail. I was able to send an SMS message from both the chat client embedded in Gmail as well as by clicking any of my contact names in an email with a stored phone number. The people I sent the SMS message were able to reply directly to my chat and their replies show in my chat box. For now this will only work for US based cell phones however the message can originate from anywhere in the world – so your relatives overseas could use Gmail to send text messages to your US based cell phone without any additional charge on their end for international messaging (you would still incur your normal fee for receiving messages). PS – This is a Gmail labs feature – so you must enable it under Settings – Labs – Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat.

On the receiving end, when you get a text message from Gmail on your phone, it will come from a number in the 406 area code. (The l33t folks in the crowd will note that this spells G0O.) You can reply to this text on your phone just like you’d reply to any other text. The reply gets routed back to our Gmail servers and shows up in your friend’s Gmail chat window. Each of your friends’ messages will come from a different 406 number so you can reply to any message and it will get back to the right person. Messages from the same person will always come from the same number, so you can even bookmark it in your phone.

If you get a message from somebody you don’t want to chat with from your phone, just reply with the word BLOCK. If you don’t want to get texts from anybody using Gmail, reply with the word STOP and we’ll leave you alone. Keep in mind that all these text messages count as part of your regular mobile messaging plan and might incur fees. So unless you know your friends have unlimited text message plans, please be sensitive to their phone bills.

Google Talk

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