Google's attempt to assimilate the communications of the world will soon take a huge step forward, with a company staff member unofficially suggesting that text messages will soon slot themselves into its Hangouts cross-platform chat suite. Read More >>

Before I go off calling everyone who has read receipts on but still doesn't reply in a timely matter rude arseholes, please note that I am one of them. But still! I hear it's verrry annoying for other people to see some messages be read (and for Facebook, it pretty much has to be that way) and quickly replied to while others just toil in obscurity. What is up with that? Read More >>

Well, someone's going to be proven a big old liar by the course of time, with yesterday's rumour of a Google/WhatsApp deal now quashed by the cross-format messaging company. Read More >>

Facebook is pushing ahead with the launch of a crazy new paid messaging service in the UK, which sees users charged up to £10 a time to send unsolicited messages to celebrities and other people not already on their friends list. Read More >>

Internet rumour has it that Google is currently negotiating terms for the purchase of hot cross-platform messaging app WhatsApp, with a final price expected to top out near the hallowed one billion dollars mark. That's about £652,000,000 which doesn't sound quite as cool. Read More >>

One thing your iPhone could be better at: sending secret encrypted messages (aka for sexting and/or illicit relationships). The regular messages app leaves everything hanging out in the open! Text Fortress is an app that encrypts the messages you send and locks them down so only the person you sent it to, can see it. Read More >>

Yesterday Facebook is added a couple of new settings for messages to make sure you see the ones you need to see. And it's also testing a system where you pay a 60p to ensure someone reads your note. Ugh, hopefully that test fails. Read More >>

The popular Whatsapp? messaging tool might be the next big money mobile acquisition, with Facebook said to be aiming its enormous wallet in the direction of the cross-platform chat app. Read More >>

A dead pigeon pulled out of a man's chimney was found to have a little red capsule attached to its leg, which contained an encoded message from the D-Day landings. Problem is, today's decrypting experts can't crack it. Can your granddad help? Read More >>

Facebook Messages, which has been the stuck-in-2004 ugly big sister to the already-butt-ugly Facebook Chat, actually looks sort of usable now thanks to a new two-panel design. Read More >>

If you worry about who's read your posts on a Facebook group, now you can breathe easy. From today, Facebook groups will tell you — and the rest of the group's members — exactly who's read the post. Which is either useful, or incredibly creepy. Read More >>

Are your special blue iMessages acting up? Do they arrive late, or maybe not at all? It looks like there's a solution—and Apple is to blame. Read More >>

That small surge of happiness and excitement you get when receiving a text message? Everyone gets it, and it's good for your brain. Read More >>

The more I read about this, the more I want to go to China and punch all these idiots out of their underpants: people paying one dollar a month to add a "sent from my iPhone" to every message they send. Read More >>

OS X Mountain Lion's Notification Centre looks incredible. So good, in fact, that we've been wondering what's going to happen to Growl notifications in the future. Some crafty developers have presented one answer to that question with Hiss, a program that integrates the latter utility into the former. Read More >>