Today Gmail rolled out yet another awesome lab (experimental) feature: Send SMS text messages via gTalk from the comfort of your Gmail client .  Testing it this morning with a friend's iPhone, the new feature works fast.  Responses sent from the phone will go back into the gmail chat window.  Interestingly, though the gmail sender's email address is shown, the actual sms sender/from field appears to be a random number.  With all the millions of gmail and gtalk users, I wonder how they assign these.

This latest labs feature is notable because it circumvents a traditional revenue stream for carriers.  Most mobile carriers still charge separately for data and SMS plans.  Since users of Android on T-Mobile have the option to use 400 txts for free or supplement data plans with unlimited texting for $10 more, why would they pay more?  This could be a major test for T-Mobile and Android's openness.  Will T-Mobile ask Google to cripple this feature?  Looking ahead, I envision further battles looping when Android or iPhone apps will force carriers to rewrite the business rules because of new applications.  For example, future apps will let users tether their phones -- meaning you can use your phone's data plan to connect your laptop to the web instead of paying extra (often $49 or more/month) for a pcmcia data card.

Green IT thinking has been spreading across corporations, even those that think different.  As a grassroots effort, IT managers have an opportunity to plant seeds that will grow into business strategy.  It's an easy sell to the business: saving energy means saving dollars, and it just so happens that it benefits the environment.  But why stop with goals to reduce carbon emissions?  Why not extend the metaphor to think about IT sustainability.  ZDNet has a great brief on what one company is doing:

Whereas my conversations at this time last year were almost always centered on reducing power consumption, now it seems that IT departments are looking much more closely at the implications over their entire IT infrastructure. It’s less about greening IT and more about making technology sustainable, in both the environmental and economic sense.

Read the whole post here.  The Green IT group that I'm working with is looking at ways to deal with eWaste and how to manage partners.  We're trying to eliminate screen savers which consume just as much CPU power as if everyone works through lunch.   A pilot program recently launched is trying to get people to think before they print.  Employees driving to work may not be tallied as corporate waste, but we're looking at ways to reduce it by expanding our remote workforce program. In short, our efforts within IT are not focused on IT really at all.  We're focused on changing core behaviors -- by planting seeds to grow a greener more sustainable culture.

Watch thousands of movies and popular video clips free on iPhone/iTouch using the new Joost application.  Joost provides streaming video via P2P networks and was previously available only as a desktop client.  Now you can enjoy films like Starship Troopers for free over wifi connection.

I tested the free app and after some initial caching lag, movies look and stream great over wireless-g.  The list of movies is limited but still impressive, and how can you complain when it's free!