Free SMS In GMail Chat
GMail users will discover two new experimental features in GMail Lab section of the Settings area: Tasks and free Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat. The Tasks functionality in GMail allows you to gain more time by organizing and checking a tasks list while an email is composed or a message is read.
The free Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat facility helps users to send and receive short text messages from the main chat window. In this way, a conversation on the personal computer through the web browser, interrupted by the absence of one of your contacts which walked away from its PC can be continued with the help of SMS.
The advantage of the user sitting in the front of its computer is represented by the possibility of sending free SMS to a mobile phone while chatting in GMail.
On the other hand, the recipient which receives the text message from a number of 406 area code (currently the Text Messaging in Chat is available only for US phones) will be able to create a reply to the person who sent the SMS, when the new message is redirected to GMail servers and displayed in a chat window inside the web browser.
In order to use this new GMail facility, users must navigate to the Settings area and select the Labs tab, then identify the Text Messaging in Chat feature in the list displayed and enable it. The SMS can be sent from the search box of the chat window by typing an US mobile phone number and selecting Send SMS option (the contact name is editable later).
The mobile telephony service provider could charge the user which receives the SMS message. But the users that do not want to receive further messages on their mobile phone via GMail chat can just simply send a single reply containing the text STOP ( or BLOCK in case of a single GMail contact).
The main useful aspect of this new GMail feature is represented by user possibility to send free short text messages to any US mobile phone from any computer having a working Internet connection.
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