During a couple of nights next week, we’ll be performing routine server maintenance. During this time, some Yahoo! Messenger features may be temporarily unavailable and the service may seem a little slow. Planned maintenance times are:
Monday, May 21 at 7pm Pacific time
Tuesday, May 22 at 7pm Pacific time
Free time zone converter
We expect the maintenance to last about 6 hours each night. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.
We’d like to know more about why and how you use emoticons. Take this brief online survey:
[Survey now closed. Thank you for your responses!]
We’ll share results here on the blog once the project is complete. Thanks!
If you are a reader of this blog, you will know that our vocal supporters of Yahoo! Messenger’s chat rooms are frustrated. It is completely understandable.
Though Yahoo! is a big company with over 10,000 employees around the world, a very small number of them work on our chat rooms; in fact you can count them on one hand.
Some of the most frequent complaints are about the instability of chat rooms, the annoying bots, and the lack of chat rooms in the Mac version. This summer, we will introduce improvements that address these issues. Here’s how:
Stability: For the past year, we have worked on rebuilding the entire back end of the chat room system. The original chat room servers are over seven years old, fossils in the world of the internet. They have been re-written from the ground up and are already running in “alpha” mode in our data centers. They will be rolled out to our everyday chat rooms users in the next month. This will greatly improve the speed and stability of chat rooms in the short term. In the long term, it will enable us to continue improving our chat rooms more quickly and efficiently.
Bots: In the next few weeks, we will begin rolling out new security measures to distinguish the humans from the machines. Humans are welcome, machines are not. The result will be a dramatic decrease in the number of “bots” that are spoiling chat rooms.
Mac chat rooms: We are already beta testing a new version of Messenger for Mac that includes, among its many improvements, native support for chat rooms. Yes you read it correctly, native support for Mac chat rooms! Client software is tricky, of course, and sometimes the “bug fixing” takes longer than we anticipate. But we believe it is more important to have a delay and get it right, than to rush and make a mistake. Like the chat rooms team, the Mac team is a small one, but they make up for it with their talents.
As a Mac user myself, I am very glad that we continue to actively support such a great platform as the Mac OS. We appreciate your patience while we get this next version ready.
We know you have been living a long time with the less-than-stellar state of Yahoo! chat rooms. We appreciate your patience as these improvements become available.
Kensington recently released their Vo200 Bluetooth Internet Phone, a handy little voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone that’s great for laptop users. It works with most major online internet phone providers, including Yahoo! Voice.
Shaped flat and sized like a credit card, the Kensington Vo200 fits into a laptop’s type I or II PC card slot for storage and recharging. A two-way swivel flap doubles as a mouthpiece and a speakerphone. And because the phone uses a Bluetooth connection, you can talk at distances of up to 30 feet away from your laptop. Use Yahoo! Messenger on your PC to make a call, then pop out the Kensington Vo200 handset and roam freely while you talk.
PC World rated the phone an 82 out of 100 (very good), saying “incoming audio was surprisingly clear” and “I got the 30 hours [standby battery life] and at least 2.5 hours of talk time before recharges were necessary”. Read the complete review at PCWorld.com or head over to Yahoo! Shopping to compare prices at several retailers.
I sat down with Matthew Skyrm, Senior Director of Product Management for Messenger. Alongside his duties running the Windows clients, he’s also the head honcho for the Mac version. I gave him my best “Puss-‘n-Boot” eyes and said “Matthew, the Mac natives are restless and I need some Mac material, news, anything.” OK, it didn’t go down like that – it was less dramatic and took place in a windowless conference room. But I did get some good info from him and our first Messenger for Mac post is here . There’s a little something for everyone – a couple of tips and some news about the next Beta…
First the tips… I asked Matthew about his favorite gems in the Mac version. Without hesitation, he started explaining the Command + N keyboard shortcut. When you hit this while you’re in Messenger for Mac, a contact search box appears and you can type in any part of a contact’s name to quickly find them and IM. While there’s also a Message button at the bottom of the Messenger List window, this lets you keyboard lovers run at full speed.
“Ok, that’s a good timesaver but what else you got?” This next one was cool – I had seen it before but since I spend my days on a PC, I hadn’t made use of it. There’s a feature built into the Mac version that lets you create a display image using your webcam. Use your built-in iSight camera or any other webcam that’s connected. Suddenly imitating emoticons with my face and sticking them into my display image became very entertaining… To access this, go into Preferences and click on Display Image.
Matthew also showed me some deeper personalization you can do in the Mac version around friend alerts. You can assign different alert behaviors and even sounds for different friends. So if you have a special friend and you always want to know when he or she comes online, you can tell Messenger for Mac to play a custom sound (choose one or upload your own) and even bounce the Messenger dock icon.
“Yeah, yeah, great Sarah. What about the next Beta?” Isn’t it amazing how I can read your thoughts? . While Matthew doesn’t yet have a firm date for the next release, he did confirm a couple of the new features that will be in it. As we mentioned in an earlier post, chat rooms will make their debut in the next Beta. The new version will also offer tabbed conversations (woo hoo!). Plus, conversation archiving will be available and will be searchable from Spotlight. So the next time you can’t recall whether your friend sent you their phone number over IM or email, you can just run a Spotlight search to quickly find out.
I sat down with Matthew Skyrm, Senior Director of Product Management for Messenger. Alongside his duties running the Windows clients, he’s also the head honcho for the Mac version. I gave him my best “Puss-‘n-Boot” eyes and said “Matthew, the Mac natives are restless and I need some Mac material, news, anything.” OK, it didn’t go down like that – it was less dramatic and took place in a windowless conference room. But I did get some good info from him and our first Messenger for Mac post is here . There’s a little something for everyone – a couple of tips and some news about the next Beta…
First the tips… I asked Matthew about his favorite gems in the Mac version. Without hesitation, he started explaining the Command + N keyboard shortcut. When you hit this while you’re in Messenger for Mac, a contact search box appears and you can type in any part of a contact’s name to quickly find them and IM. While there’s also a Message button at the bottom of the Messenger List window, this lets you keyboard lovers run at full speed.
“Ok, that’s a good timesaver but what else you got?” This next one was cool – I had seen it before but since I spend my days on a PC, I hadn’t made use of it. There’s a feature built into the Mac version that lets you create a display image using your webcam. Use your built-in iSight camera or any other webcam that’s connected. Suddenly imitating emoticons with my face and sticking them into my display image became very entertaining… To access this, go into Preferences and click on Display Image.
Matthew also showed me some deeper personalization you can do in the Mac version around friend alerts. You can assign different alert behaviors and even sounds for different friends. So if you have a special friend and you always want to know when he or she comes online, you can tell Messenger for Mac to play a custom sound (choose one or upload your own) and even bounce the Messenger dock icon.
“Yeah, yeah, great Sarah. What about the next Beta?” Isn’t it amazing how I can read your thoughts? . While Matthew doesn’t yet have a firm date for the next release, he did confirm a couple of the new features that will be in it. As we mentioned in an earlier post, chat rooms will make their debut in the next Beta. The new version will also offer tabbed conversations (woo hoo!). Plus, conversation archiving will be available and will be searchable from Spotlight. So the next time you can’t recall whether your friend sent you their phone number over IM or email, you can just run a Spotlight search to quickly find out.
Stay tuned to the blog for future news on the next Yahoo! Messenger for Mac Beta.
At the top of the Yahoo! Messenger window lurks an often overlooked, but handy piece of the interface: the contact search bar. Aptly named, it lets you quickly find a friend in your contact list and start a conversation with them, whether it’s over IM, email, SMS or voice. And even if someone’s not in your contact list or address book, you can just enter a Yahoo! ID, phone number or email to get started.
A handy shortcut for accessing the contact search bar is the Windows + Y keyboard shortcut (the Windows key is that one in the lower left that looks like a waving flag). No matter where you are on your computer, this will bring up the Messenger window with the cursor in the contact search bar. This even works when your Messenger window is closed.
When you type a friend’s name in the search bar, the available communication options will appear in a drop down menu below the bar. What’s available depends on what information you have stored for that friend in your address book. For example, if you have a friend’s mobile phone number, you can click to send an SMS message to their phone or click to call their mobile using Yahoo! Voice. Clicking “Send Email” will start a new email message to them in your computer’s default email program.
You can use the contact search bar to start a conversation with anyone, even if they’re not in your address book. I was searching for London hotels the other day and needed to call one of them. I wanted to use my low calling rate on Yahoo! Voice, so I copied the phone number from the hotel website, hit Windows +Y on my keyboard and pasted the number into the contact search bar. I then selected “Call Phone Number”. Ring, ring – I was connected.
And to do justice to the “search” part of its name, you can also start a web search from the bar. Just enter any term and click “Search the web” in the drop down menu. I did this by accident once when I typed in a friend’s name – I learned all kinds of new things about him!
The search bar also works within the Address Book view. Just switch modes from your contact list to address book by clicking the Address Book icon () above the bar, then start your search. When a friend’s contact info comes up, you can click to IM, call a phone number, SMS or email. The difference with the address book view is that the actual phone numbers, email addresses and Yahoo! IDs are visible, and you can click to access your friend’s full listing.
I listen to music most of the day while I’m working, so the iTunes plug-in is a personal favorite. Once installed, it lets me control iTunes remotely from Yahoo! Messenger. It shows me what track is playing along with artist and album, and even allows me to toggle the shuffle feature on or off. The interface also includes forward and back buttons, a volume slider and a pause/play button.
One of my favorite features is that when a new track begins, the iTunes plug-in briefly displays the album artwork, and then drops it into the center of the spinning record seen on the left side of the plug-in.
The iTunes plug-in is available for download free from the Yahoo! Messenger plug-in gallery (along with hundreds of others!). Note that plug-ins are only available for the Windows version of Yahoo! Messenger (8.1).
An important security update is now available for users of Yahoo! Messenger on Windows. It is strongly suggested that all users download and install the latest version.
Even if you installed Yahoo! Messenger as recently as June 7th, 2007 you may not have the very latest version.
You can check which version you have by clicking the ‘Help’ menu option, at the top right of your Yahoo! Messenger window, and then clicking ‘About Yahoo! Messenger’. If the Yahoo! Messenger version number is 8.1.0.401 (or higher) then you have the latest and do not need to take any immediate action. If you are running anything lower than 8.1.0.401 then please upgrade to the latest version.
If you choose not to take action right now, you will receive a Security Update notification. We very strongly suggest that you click the ‘Update Now’ button and follow the instructions provided.
After you have upgraded to the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger, as a general rule, we recommend that, even if you know and trust the sender, you always take caution when receiving files from other Yahoo! Messenger users, clicking links, etc.
When you install Yahoo! Messenger, you also have the option of installing Yahoo! Toolbar along with it. I know, I know – you may groan when you see additional software offered during an installation. But there’s a reason - there are some very handy Messenger features integrated right into Toolbar, giving you access to your online friends no matter where you are on the internet.
Once you’ve installed Yahoo! Toolbar, it automatically appears near the top of your web browser. Depending on whether you’re signed in to the Yahoo! network, you may or may not see the Yahoo! Messenger button. To add it, click on the toolbar’s “Settings” button and select “Add/Edit Buttons”. Locate the Messenger smiley in the button name list and click “Add this Button”. (Note that the Messenger button is only available for Yahoo! Toolbar for Internet Explorer.)
The Yahoo! Messenger toolbar button offers some handy features when you’re signed in. It shows you what friends are online and organizes them into the same groups you have in your contact list in Messenger (it can also show offline contacts). Just select a friend from the list to start an IM, even if your Messenger window is closed. There’s also one-click access to your Messenger conversation archive.
You can also change your status message from the Messenger button, and even set your status to display the URL of the web page you’re currently on (I use this a lot when I find a good story in the Odd News section of Yahoo! News). You can also choose “Send this page” from the menu to IM the URL of the page you’re on to a friend.
The Messenger toolbar button also offers a Sidebar option that when selected, opens up a Sidebar on the left side of your browser that displays your list of contacts (see screenshot). This makes it really easy to see who comes off and online, and quickly IM friends while you’re surfing the web. There’s even a little “Send Current Web Link” button next to each friend.
In addition to the Messenger button, you can customize your Yahoo! Toolbar with feature-filled buttons from other favorite Yahoo! services including News, Maps, My Yahoo!, Sports, Groups and more.