Chat

Palringo is available for Windows and Mac (currently in testing) but its niche seems to be when used on a mobile handset like an iPhone or Blackberry.

For your existing contacts it supports Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live!, etc. but also adds a dedicated Palringo account. This Palringo service has easy to add or join Groups providing office and small business users a convenient way to communicate.

A feature that might prove useful is voice and picture instant messages. Send a quick voice message to a co-worker.

Beejive has a somewhat similar IM client and Fring competes on the iPhone. Read more

Google Labs is rolling out a feature that will allow you to send a SMS message to a friend's cell phone from inside Gmail's chat. This is not groundbreaking news in and of itself. Yahoo and AOL already have this. SMS via AOL/AIM is the one reason I still use AIM every now and then.

Instead of sending email to the cell service provider or create a temporary id, your gmail account will be assigned a phone number in the 406 area code.

Unfortunately I mostly use a Google Apps account so don't normally see all these cool new things available in the Labs. A regular gmail.com account of mine does not have this feature added yet. So I can't use it yet.

Has anybody tried it yet? What are your impressions?

Via: Techcrunch: Gmail Labs Adds Text Messaging Feature

and Webmonkey: OMG! Gmail Adds SMS Chat