arghyle

Thanks to Callwave, Google homepage users can now add SMS messaging to their list of widgets. This tool allows you to send out free messages, which is pretty awesome, though your friends will still be charged at their standard rate. The setup takes just a few seconds and you will have to provide Callwave with your phone number and email address (along with a PIN so you don’t have to re-register if you want to add the widget to a different system) but that’s it.

Once you confirm your phone number (through a text message) all you have to do is add in a friend’s phone number and their carrier (it’s okay if you don’t know the carrier) and start messaging. It works really quickly and, from what I have seen, quite well. There are also widgets for Apple, Yahoo, and Vista, in case you don’t use Google…

There are some problems I have seen so far, but nothing huge. The main one is that on their site the widget has a built in address book, which my Google one does not. This would be a great feature because I only know the phone number of a few of my contacts so I need to use my phone to get their number. The Vista version has the contacts pulldown but does not make it clear how exactly you add contacts. The Vista version can also automatically split the message if required. Another downside is that all your messages end with “(callwave.com/sms) written at the end, but that’s not a big deal.

All told, it’s not perfect but it get’s the job done. Definitely one of the better, and more useful, widgets I have found so far…

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