(By James Quintana Pearce on MocoNews)
Yahoo is updating its e-mail client, and among other things is the ability to send free text messages to a mobile phone number from within Yahoo Mail. This service will work in the US, Canada, India and the Philippines in real-time, although only on certain carriers (which will be published in the Help pages of Yahoo Mail). Of course, the people receiving the messages on their phones may have to pay for that, and to reply via SMS. Yahoo is also adding instant messaging capability to Yahoo Mail (such as Google has) which will allow access to Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. Perhaps more impressively, people will also be able to “easily convert their e-mail messages into IM chats or switch to a text message dialogue with the click of a button, when friends come online or go mobile, and vice-versa”.

Nikhil adds: A credible source also informs me that Google India is currently working on incorporating mobile features to Orkut, particularly mobile scraps. Indian social networking sites had done that quite some time ago, but none has a userbase as big as Orkut. I guess that means more scraps with SMS lingo..ugh.