![[Valid RSS]](/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.1389 Beta
Yahoo! has released a new update to Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta. This version includes a few new features along with bug fixes, stability and speed improvements, plus some changes to the contact list.
Here's a quick look at what's new:
Bigger emoticons
They're not massive, but a little bit bigger so you can express yourself with more oomph.
( vs. ). We also enabled a few more for use in your status message.
Games are back!
We know you missed them in the earlier releases of 9.0, but games are now back! Click the new "Activities" button while you IM to choose a game to play with a friend (or for a plug-in). Checkers, pool, toki toki boom…you know the rest. Note that your friend needs to be on 8.1 or this latest release of 9.0 Beta to play games with you.
Status message improvements
The status message menu has been split into two parts - one where you can indicate your availability (busy, available) and the other for putting in a custom message or a link you want to share. That way even if you’re away from IM, you can still share a funny thought, webpage or video with your friends via your status message.
Yahoo! Updates
Yahoo! Messenger is one of the first products to showcase what your friends are doing on Yahoo!. When a friend buzzes a favorite news story or changes their Avatar, a Yahoo! Update is displayed next to that friend in your contact list (with more detail in their contact card). So even if you’re not actively communicating with them, you can still stay up to date with what they're doing. To manage what Updates you broadcast, click on your display image in the contact list, then click the "Manage my updates" link. We'll add more types of updates in the future.
New contact list format button
When we first launched 9.0 Beta, a lot of users weren't crazy about the extra space in the contact list we created for display images and status messages. So we made two views available for your contact list - detailed or compact. In this latest version, we added a button next to the contact search bar to change it, along with other settings like "Show Offline Contacts".
Import Contacts - new & improved
Select "Import Contacts" from the Contacts menu and you can add friends from address books you have on other sites like Gmail, Orkut, Yahoo! Address Book, Hotmail, AOL and many more. We'll pull in your contacts and make it easy for you to start talking with them on Yahoo! Messenger.
Voice in chat rooms for Vista users & faster Captcha process
We know our Windows Vista users have been waiting a really long time for this. We added a fix to this latest version of Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta that allows Windows Vista users on 9.0 to use voice in chat rooms (and conferences). We also changed the chat room verification process. You can now enter the Captcha code right in the chat room window instead of having to go off to another page.
New IM notification toast
If your IM conversation window falls into the background, this new feature will make sure you don't miss out on the latest message from your friend. When a new message comes in to the background window, a small notification will pop up from the lower right corner of your screen with the beginning text of the IM your friend just sent. (You can turn this off under Messenger > Preferences > Alerts & Sounds.)
Download: Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.1389 Beta
View: Yahoo Messenger Beta
Yahoo quietly launches Yahoo Live!
Yahoo has quietly launched Yahoo live which the developer blog describes it as as "an experiment in personal live video broadcasting." Here is what the blog reads:
View: Yahoo! LiveYahoo! Messenger for Vista Refresh
Yahoo has released a new Refresh edition of the yahoo messenger for vista, with more stability and lots of bugfixes. This one signs in faster than the old one (sign in time was an issue on the previous vista edition), seems like they have fixed it and on the road to a good release.
So far there's the ability to change the layout and colors of your IM contact list, a tabbed conversation window for simplifying multiple conversations, and a sidebar gadget that gives you the option of keeping important contacts separate from the conversation window. This sidebar gadget appears to be taking advantage of some of the Vista APIs that were announced in October. The overall look is very Vista-y, as you can tell by the screen shots below. In terms of sharing items with your contacts, you can send files as large as 2 GB. There's also the ability to send IMs to both your Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger contacts.
Download: Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Refresh (2008.01.11.428)
View: Yahoo Messenger For Vista Home Page
Yahoo Messenger For Vista Preview Build Released
Despite the Mac vs. PC ads that have completely run rampant these past few months, there's still a lot going on for Vista. Yahoo Messenger plans on taking advantage of every single Vista user out there. It's now previewing a new beta version of the Messenger for Vista, which has some key functionality so far. Yahoo's looking for beta testers to hammer out the necessary kinks and details pertaining to the core functionality of Yahoo Messenger for Vista.
So far there's the ability to change the layout and colors of your IM contact list, a tabbed conversation window for simplifying multiple conversations, and a sidebar gadget that gives you the option of keeping important contacts separate from the conversation window. This sidebar gadget appears to be taking advantage of some of the Vista APIs that were announced in October. The overall look is very Vista-y, as you can tell by the screen shots below. In terms of sharing items with your contacts, you can send files as large as 2 GB. There's also the ability to send IMs to both your Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger contacts.
What's missing for this preview, however, is the voice, webcam, chat rooms, SMS, IMVironments, Audibles, plug-ins, photo-sharing (unless you send the photo as a file), and conferencing. These features are in the works and most will be available for the next Vista release. While the new Yahoo Messenger looks cool and can send IMs to Windows Live contacts, it's hard to ignore the several strides that have taken place in the world of IMing lately.
Download: Yahoo Messenger For Vista Preview Build
View: Yahoo Messenger For Vista Home Page
Source: Mashable
Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta
Yahoo is launching a new version of its popular Yahoo Messenger on Tuesday that lets you forward phone calls and instant messages and watch videos and view photos with friends, among other enhancements. But probably the most popular thing will be the new emoticons.
The new Yahoo Messenger toolbar lets you send an instant message, text message or call a contact with one click.
(Credit: Yahoo)Yahoo Messenger 9.0 has a redesigned interface with new "skin" background designs and new emoticons for expressions like "thumbs up," "thumbs down," and "rock on," (yes, the little yellow face ball is holding up its second and fourth fingers in the rock-star pose).
Beyond the surface, some of the changes are even more impressive. For instance, it's easier to call, text or IM contacts by simply hovering over the contact name and clicking. You can also click an arrow to the left of the contact and see a larger version of their avatar, contact them, start an e-mail session, and edit their information. And you can send a text message to someone's phone using your computer keyboard. These communications features were here before but were just not as apparent or easy as they are now.
You can also forward offline IMs to a mobile device and forward incoming phone calls to a phone number.
Sharing online map links doesn't open a new browser window, but displays the map in the IM window, allowing you to zoom and scroll around.
You can also send videos from YouTube, Yahoo Video and other sources, and you and your contact can watch the synchronized video via a sharing window, pausing to chat or replay.
The same thing with photos from Flickr or your desktop. You and your contact can view them together via a sharing window.
And file transfers between contacts can be as large as you want, instead of limited to one gigabyte in size. If you have Norton antivirus on your desktop, the files can be scanned for viruses as well.
Some changes will be instantly noticeable. For instance, the contacts have two lines now, with the status message on its own line. But you can condense that back to one line if you like. You can also insert emoticons within the status messages--like I could say I'm "in a meeting" and have the "sleepy" emoticon next to it with the "zzzzs" trailing up.
Yahoo is expanding the service to more countries and languages, too. People in Thailand and Indonesia now can instant message in their native language, and in India they have nine new languages to choose from. The service has been localized in six new markets, bringing the total to 25 markets reached.
Download: Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta
View: Yahoo Messenger Beta
Source: Webware
Yahoo's social network is here!
Yahoo's new social network, Mash, is appropriately named. It feels like a mash-up of Facebook, MySpace, and Wikipedia. It's taken the best -- or at least, most popular -- features from these services and put them together in a very compelling social service. I strongly doubt it will suffer the same fate of that other social network, the failing Yahoo 360.
Here's how Mash has borrowed from the best:
MySpace: Users can add their own backgrounds and color schemes to totally destroy the readiability and speed of their pages. This is big part of MySpace's appeal. I've never understood why, but there you go. There's a twist with Mash, though: When viewing any profile, Users can switch from the pimped out page (the "fugly" version) to a plain, clean page with a white backgrond.
Facebook: There's a library of modules users can add to their pages. And the layout of the Mash pages is pretty strict, which preseves readiability, especially if you turn off custom backgrounds. Yahoo plans to open up the module platform to developers, but it hasn't yet.
There are already some interesting modules, though. I like the MyMashLog feature, which like MyBlogLog (which Yahoo acquired), collects the names of everyone who visits your page
Wikipedia: The most interesting part of the Mash model is that, by default, your friends can edit your pages. Not just write on your wall, but really get in there and rearrange vital organs. Someone added a custom RSS feed (Webware, of course) to my page, for example. I returned the favor by putting a picture of a Mars Attacks action figure on his background.
As in Wikipedia, there's a revision history so users can roll back changes they don't like. There are also privacy options that let you lock down your pages.
Mash doesn't push a Twitter-like function, but there's a "blurt" box on each profile, and you can filter the "Pulse" feature, which lets you keep up with everything happening in your network, to show only blurts. That's pretty close.
At the moment there's no search, and as far as I know no mobile version. But as a public beta Mash is impressive. It's fun to use and very fast to get into the system. The profile editor is also very slick and a pleasure to work with. It's also very easy to add friends.
During beta, you need an invitation to get into Mash.
If your interested in getting an invite, leave a comment with your name and email address.
View: Mash
Source: Webware
Yahoo! Messenger 8.1.0.419
Yahoo! Messenger is a popular instant messaging client and protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger is provided free of charge and can be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo! ID" which also allows access to other Yahoo! services, such as Yahoo! Mail, where users can be automatically notified when they receive new email. Yahoo! offers PC to PC telephone, file transfers, webcam hosting, text messaging service, and chat rooms in various categories. In addition to instant messaging features similar to those offered by ICQ, it also offers (on Microsoft Windows) many unique features such as: IMVironments (customizing the look of Instant Message windows), address-book integration and Custom Status Messages. It was also the first major IM client to feature BUZZing and music-status. Another recently added feature is customized avatars.
Features:
- Yahoo! Voice - Yahoo! Voice is a Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service provided by Yahoo! via its Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging application.
- Voicemail and file sharing - Yahoo! added voicemail and file sending capabilities to their client. File-sharing of sizes up to 1GB was added.
- Plug-ins -As of 8.0, Yahoo!
Messenger has added the ability for users to create plug-ins (via the use of the freely available Yahoo! MessengerPlug-inSDK), which are then hosted and showcased on the Yahoo!Plug-ing allery.
- Interoperability with Windows Live Messenger-This allows, for Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger users to chat to each other without the need to create an account on the other service, provided both
Download: Yahoo! Messenger 8.1.0.419
View: Yahoo! Messenger Home Page
Yahoo Mail adds SMS, drops beta tag
The new version of Yahoo Mail comes out of beta on Monday, and it sports some spiffy new features, like the ability to send text messages to a cell phone--the first free Web-based mail provider to offer that function.
A button at the top of the page gives you the option to choose between sending an e-mail, chatting over IM or sending a text, or SMS, message, for free. You enter a contact's name, type in the mobile phone number, and send a message. It appears in a talk bubble next to your avatar in the Yahoo Mail window. The person receiving the text message can simply respond via text.
Yahoo Mail now lets you send a text message to a mobile phone.
This feature will be useful for reaching people when you know they aren't online but likely have their cell phones with them. It is also appealing for those of us who are SMS-phobic.
Yahoo Mail also has a new shortcuts feature that enables you to quickly add an address to your contacts list or view it on a map, add an event to the calendar, and even conduct a Web search on certain terms. When items in a message have blue dash underlines, you can hover over them with the cursor and right-click to call up the short-cut action.
Now you can send instant messages not only to Yahoo Mail and Messenger customers but also to people using Windows Live Messenger.
The new Yahoo Mail is faster than the beta versions and offers six colors to choose from to customize the interface. It also offers the ability to refine e-mail search results by searching specifically by sender, folder, date, attachment type and message status.
Yahoo Mail lets people send instant messages to Windows Live Messenger users.
Unfortunately, Yahoo Mail still brings up a default Welcome Tab page, with links to news and other items, and forces me to click on the in-box link before I can get to my e-mail. Paying customers of Yahoo Mail Plus go directly to the in-box.
The new version of Yahoo Mail will roll out globally over the next six weeks, says John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail.
Source: Webware