iTechnoMax

We don’t see it in our Gmail settings (yet), but its being reported that Gmail Labs has added a very useful opt-in feature for sending text / SMS messages to mobile phones using the built-in Chat functionality.

To use the feature, people can click on a chat window’s settings to send a text message with SMS or type a contact’s phone number in the chat contact search box, Gmail Product Manager Keith Coleman said in an interview. The feature is experimental, available only to those who opt to use it through the Gmail Labs settings, and Google will begin offering it.

However, Google still has interface refinement and testing work to do before any feature becomes part of the standard Gmail application, Coleman said. Gmail Labs is intended to be a proving ground where new features can be tried sooner rather than later, even if they’re still immature.

He first time you send a text message, it will appear on the person’s phone as coming from a number in the 406 area code. Google has made several thousands of these numbers available for Gmail users, and once a number is associated with your account, all of the text messages you send through Gmail will come from that number.

The 406 number works both ways, so your friend can reply to you via text message. Also, your friend can save that number in their phone as belonging to you, and they can even use it to initiate new chats with you.

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