Google Labs is starting to collect some really cool features that bring GMail to a new level of usefulness and the SMS chat feature now available is really neat.  The new SMS Chat feature enables sending SMS text messages from GMail to any mobile phone which is totally cool.  You can carry on text message conversations using GMail without pulling your phone out of your pocket.  To enable the SMS Chat feature you go to the Labs tab under GMail settings and enable it.  Once you do that when you enter a phone number in the GMail Chat search box you get an option to send a text message.  The first text message you send this way will show up on the receipeient’s phone as a 406 area code and the phone number that shows up will be associated with your GMail account going forward.  This is way cool. 

NOTE: this tool is not showing in the Labs options yet but according to Google will appear soon.

(via Webmonkey)

UPDATE: Google has delayed this feature for a couple of weeks due to a fatal bug that needs to be fixed.