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Joopz does SMS messaging for Outlook

Turn Outlook into an SMS base station.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
Josh Lowensohn

This morning Web-SMS service Joopz is launching a new Outlook plug-in that turns your desktop e-mail client into a one-stop SMS hub. Once tied into your Joopz account, you can send and receive text messages like you would e-mail. The tool also syncs up with your Outlook contacts, to let you send notes to anybody with a phone number.

MobileSphere

The service is flouting the new plug-in as a handy way to keep in touch with friends, but for business users who use SMS to communicate with their colleagues while out on the road, this could be a handy, finger-saving tool for those with their PC handy.

In addition to one-on-one SMS messaging, you can send out messages to groups of friends like you'd do with an e-mail. There's also a group chat feature that mimics the "reply-all" feature to send the response back to everyone on the list, be it e-mail addresses or phone numbers.

Since launching in December (coverage), the service has launched profile modules for MySpace and Facebook, and is currently working on a desktop application that acts like an IM client.