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.
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.
