Google Labs launches 2 way SMS from within Gmail
by tim on Dec.11, 2008, under random thoughts
I heard that Google labs had launched 2 way SMS from within Gmail on Twitter and immediately had to try it out. I went and enabled the feature and sent several text messages between the computer and my phone. It worked fast and was flawlessly.
The messages are sent and received through the embedded chat application. You would have thought that this would be available in their external Gtalk application as well, but I’ve found no evidence of this to be true. Currently, the beta is limited to U.S. phones.
Comments on Techcrunch’s blog mentioned that this has been available through AIM and Yahoo IM for some time. I do know that there was the capability to send 1-way SMS’s (from the chat application to the recipients phone) but I didn’t think that 2 way was possible, except by using an IM SMS application.
In other words, the recipients of the IM’s on those platforms would have to either have a GPRS IM application like Fring, MunduIM, Palringo, etc. Or they would have to be using Yahoo’s or AIM’s SMS texting system which would require the person on the phone to have an AIM account or a Yahoo account. (I stand corrected, at least with Yahoo Messenger 9.0. I just tested it, and it appears that 2-way SMS is available through their Messenger as well, regardless of whether the person has a Yahoo account or not, and they aren’t required to be signed in either.)
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Wilmington Blogger
September 23rd, 2009 on 4:05 am
To send a message, just type a phone number into the search box at the top of the chat window on the left side of the Gmail interface, and hit ‘Send SMS’. Numbers can be associated with contact names so you don’t have to keep manually entering them. Recipients of these messages can respond by simply hitting ‘reply’ on their cell phones to send their own SMS message