SMS

Communication is increasingly moving off the grid and into the cloud. For cellphone users -- especially ones with smartphones -- there are a host of online tools and apps that can help reduce usage on carrier plans and save money. Here are a half dozen easy options.

Facebook unveiled on Monday a messaging service designed to incorporate email, SMS, chat and messages under one system, a move that could potentially erode the markets of a host of other high-profile email providers from Google's Gmail to Yahoo's Yahoo mail. But Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg downplayed the potential affect on email providers, saying in a Webcast: "This is not an email killer. This is a messaging system that includes email."

The only people who don't know about text messages these days are 90-year-olds and infants. Even if you don't use the feature, it is available on nearly every phone in use. Recently, text messaging overtook voice use on cell phones for the first time, indicating that texting is here to stay. Even...

Count on it each election season: Our elected representatives finally get off their duffs and start working on things that will actually affect our pocketbooks.Early this week, Sen. Herb Kohl, who chairs the Antitrust Subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the big four...