Fanatic Live » Miscellaneous

Windows Live Messenger 9 Public Beta

Adrian Doherty — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:29:56 +0000

If you’ve been away for a few days you may have not noticed the new Windows Live Messenger 9 beta has been publicly released. Sporting some new features, old features reworked and a new Vista-like interface. To get it all you need to do is head over to http://download.live.com/ and follow the directions. For an overview head to Liveside for an comparative look and for all the features, information from the team itself head over to Windows Live Messenger team’s blog.

It’s certainly a good update in the sense there heading in the right direction. A big selling point is creating your own custom Dynamic Display Pictures which you can use pictures or even webcam video to create them and best of all its free! A few little glitches and bugs it’s back on the track to take back the Instant Messaging market.

What would you like to see?

Adrian Doherty — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:45:15 +0000

With seemingly little news about the next version of Windows Live Messenger which is still being tested inhouse and a very limited group of testers, I thought we could start listing your ideas about what you would want or like to see or even improved in version 9.

How? Just register at our forums and post the ideas here or even just drop your ideas as a comment on this story. You never know, they see the ideas and may even try implementing or fixing something you may of suggested

i’m Making a Difference Update

Adrian Doherty — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:08:56 +0000

Many of you know of the i’m Making a Difference project has been around for a year. Well today Dharmesh Mehta announced on MessengerSays that it has donated $1.3 Million to the various charities associated with the project. As we speak the total has been updated to $1,409,788 Million.

They have also announced that theres still no set limit on donations and are continuing the project now and into the future so this is great news to all that participate and want to make a difference. Remember if you wish to help the cause head over to i’m Making a Difference site.

A new beta but remember…

Adrian Doherty — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:41:46 +0000

While the buzz around is the Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta, you must remember that if your considering using it your going to have to go without. Going without I mean, not able to use add-ons such as Stuffplug and Messenger Plus! as neither software are compatible as yet(leaked beta after all!)

Atleast for now Patchou has said compatibility will be expected on the release of Messenger Plus! 4.50, theres no word on when Stuffplug will be. We’ll keep you posted but for now if you love your add-ons, still use Windows Live Messenger 8.5.

MSN Messenger add-on for mIRC

Adrian Doherty — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 06:26:56 +0000

Thanks to carvell1 for posting on the forum;

Ever wanted to use Messenger while using mIRC? Well you can with MSN Messenger add-on for mIRC. It comes with some of the usual features you’d expect as well as;

Notification of users opening chat window(s) with you

Automatically connect to your account when mIRC starts

Display Away when your Away on mIRC

Conversation Logging

And much much more. So if you want to try it out, head over to the MSN Messenger add-on for mIRC site and of course make sure you have mIRC installed to try this baby out!

MSN Messenger Forced Upgrade Part 2

Adrian Doherty — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:59:55 +0000

In what the Messenger Team dubs as the second phase, the forced upgrades for Windows 98, 98SE and ME will be shortly rolled out to the Messenger Network. That means users will be forced to use MSN Messenger 7.0.0820 and more likely, the last version of MSN Messenger for those Windows users unless of course another problem such as this arise. They’ve also commented on the likely third phase which effects clients on which they haven’t said. So for those, expect a forced upgrade soon.

MSN Messenger vulnerable to â€˜highly criticalâ€™ webcam flaw

Adrian Doherty — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:26:09 +0000

From ZDNet, Exploit code for a “highly critical” vulnerability in MSN Messenger has been posted to a Chinese-language forum, prompting Microsoft to urge all users to immediately migrate to Windows Live Messenger 8.1. The exploit, available here, is caused by an error in the handling of video conversations and can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow via specially crafted data sent to a user.

Secunia warns that successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code, but requires that the victim accepts the incoming Webcam invitation. “This is under investigation,” a Microsoft spokesman said. “Our investigation so far shows that the latest version, Windows Live Messenger 8.1, is not vulnerable to this issue,” he added, urging Windows Live Messenger 8.0 users to upgrade to Messenger 8.1. “We have encouraged customers to upgrade to Windows Live Messenger 8.1 beginning February 2007,” the spokesman said.

Y! Messenger launches – plug-ins popular in beta

Dan — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 13:44:02 +0000

Read/WriteWeb has an interesting post announcing the official release of Yahoo! Messenger with Voice and info on plug-ins.

Third-party developers can create plug-ins (aka widgets) for the platform. This has already proven to be very popular – since opening up the plug-in platform on June 20, third party and Yahoo! developers have developed 180 plug-ins worldwide.

The most popular plug-ins for Y! Messenger are currently utilities like Pando (a way to share large files and folders), YEmote (emoticons), an eCards widget, an iTunes “remote” and a drawing/photo tool.

I don’t know how many plug-ins are out for Windows Live Messenger, but Yahoo! currently sounds like it’s been more successful in this area.

Microsoft this week launched Windows Live Gallery, a one-stop shop to personalize your Windows Live experience. Live Gallery helps you find all the cool & useful Gadgets, Toolbar custom buttons, Messenger Bots and much more.

Since Windows Live Messenger plug-ins functionality is still in beta and is not turned on by default, there aren’t any available on there. For the same reason, I’m not surprised there aren’t as many plug-ins for Windows Live Messenger as there are for Yahoo! Messenger.

New Yahoo! Messenger API

Dan — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 12:37:22 +0000

ProgrammableWeb reports on Yahoo! Messenger’s new plug-in API:

Yahoo! this week introduced a new Plug-in SDK for Yahoo! Messenger. It is a JavaScript and C++ API for building features to run inside their IM client. Some initial plug-ins are over in the Yahoo! Gallery.

There is a new Messenger API entry on the ProgrammableWeb site.

Live Gadgets and Messenger apps!

Gareth Williams — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 15:01:02 +0000

I was just handed this URL, which is the blog of Koji Kato, he showed us how to write some simple applications for live.com and custom apps for messenger in the second Window Live Session. Have a look and see how easy it is to create one!

Thanks to Romain for the link.