For reasons best known to itself, Apple removed the SMS functionality from Leopard’s Address Book.

A new widget emitSMS brings back the ability to send text messages from Dashboard, using the Bluetooth connection on many Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson and other mobile/cell phones.

The back of the widget includes options for searching the mobile phone field of contacts in your Address Book, enabling long messages, including a read receipt and storing the text messages:

For reasons best known to itself, Apple has restricted the Bluetooth functionality of its iPhone to pairing with headsets, so I can’t test this. And I very happily returned my Treo 680 to the IT Department, so I am out of options. But I have a hunch that if I could test this, it would work well.

emitSMS is donation-ware and is available from the developer’s web site

[Via macOSXHints ]Address Book, Leopard, SMS, text messages, mobile phones, cell phones, widget, dashboard

Mission Impossible fan rejoice!

Self-destructing emails and text messages (SMS) will be a feature of Internet communication in 2006, according to an article on C|Net news.

Staellium UK already offers disappearing text messages for mobile phone (i.e. cell phone) users in the UK.

But there’s more to come:

“The ability to send a self-destruct message has massive benefits for people from all walks of life, from everyday mobile users, through to celebrities and business people, but this is just the start,” Staellium CEO Carole Barnum said.

The company plans to launch its StealthText service (including self-destructing emails, voice and photo messages) world-wide in Spring next year.

The full article, should you choose to accept it, can be found here.

[Stuart Little action shot from JmanX.com.]