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.
Archive for the 'Miscellaneous' Category
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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.
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.
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.
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.