An incredibly useful feature is coming to Gmail. Starting today (if all goes well), you’ll be able to send your friends and contacts text messages via the integrated Gmail chat. You’ll be able to save phone numbers to contacts and Google will give you the option of sending them a text should they go offline. It sounds very beta right now though, with Google using 406 area code numbers to push the texts out.

The 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.

Google never ceases to amaze.

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Verizon is digging deep in to the pockets of its corporate users by charging an additional three cents per text message sent to its customers. This won’t affect you when you’re texting your friends, however it will affect standard-rate and premium programs of mobile terminated messages.

That includes text alerts, interactive voting notifications, SMS search responses and pretty much anything else that would’ve charged you anyway. Those Jamster commercials on late night television? Yup, those will cost them $0.03 every time they send you a message about Ne-Yo. Now, you’ll just have to add 3 cents on to your EZ Flirt bill, thanks to Verizon. Geez, can’t a guy get a lucky break?

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Is there anything Mozilla doesn’t create that facilitates your web surfing experience? Firefox 3 came out back in June, yet Mozilla is still working hard to provide its users with top end interactivity for its interweb softwares. Now, Mozilla wants to take its browser to the next level with instant messaging integrated into your web browsing. It’s called Snowl, that’s Snow and Owl combined for the less observant. Mozilla Labs lists a few key ideas behind their design phase:

• It doesn’t matter where messages originate. Whether they come from traditional email servers, RSS/Atom feeds, web discussion forums, social networks, or other sources, they are all the same.
• Some messages are more important than others, and the best interface for actively reading important messages is different from the best one for casually browsing unimportant ones.
• A search-based interface for message retrieval is more powerful and easier to use than one that makes you organize your messages first to find them later.
• Browser functionality for navigating web content, like tabs, bookmarks, and history, also works well for navigating messages.

As of now, Snowl is still in its prototype phase but is free to download at the link provided below. It supports two sources of messages: RSS/Atom feeds and Twitter. No word on whether or not Ogio will make a Snowl backpack. If they did, I’d rock it. Hit the jump for more information:

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Someone must’ve turned on the genius machine over at AT&T. Though I’m told AT&T’s customer service representatives aren’t known for delivering on the spot information about up and coming products, word has gotten out that MMS (multimedia messaging service) support is being considered for the iPhone 3G.

MMS allows transmission of text, pictures, and potentially video to other MMS-enabled phones.  Served a funky omelette at a run-down diner that mildly resembles the fifth president of the United States? If you’ve got the new iPhone, you won’t miss a thing.

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We’re pretty sure that we’re really approaching an announcement now. This morning we found pictures of 2 unannounced phones from SonyEricsson being leaked on Chinese forums. The black phone shown above should be the rumored Sofia (code name, K850i) with a 5 megapixels CCD camera module and xenon flash. (CCD, as found on the Thai I-mobile 902, not CMOS). Pay attention to the newly introduced dial/hang up buttons right next to the 2 softkeys below the screen, the d-pad that merges with the number pad at the middle to fit a pretty large QVGA screen. Also check out the camera illumination icons similar to the K810i, that will light up in camera mode to act as camera option shortcuts. The photos are dated back 3 months ago, so it is possible that SE might make final touchups to the design, as experienced by the K750i and W800i in the past. The Sofia should be a WCDMA device due early Q2 this year, price will be significantly lower than Nokia N95.

Jump to check out the other leaked model: Maria M610i WCDMA messaging device with 3.2 megapixels camera.

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