January 31, 2007 on 12:05 pm | In News | 17 Comments
I was looking over my phone bill from the holidays and thought the phone company had messed up. My long distance charges were lower than usual.
It’s probably because my calling habits have changed since I installed the Linksys CIT310 Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger on my PC. It sits right next to my computer, and I use it to make low-cost PC-to-phone calls and free PC-to-PC calls through Messenger.
Because the CIT310 is dual-mode, I can also run my standard phone line into the phone to make and receive calls on it. The best part is that it’s cordless, so I can walk around while I talk. Now I don’t suffer from that same headset problem that Toula had in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
Other cool features of the phone:
- Your Yahoo! Messenger contact list shows up right on the phone. So if a contact is online in Messenger, you can call the person PC-to-PC using the phone, and it’s free.
- Yahoo! Local Search is integrated. Type in a search term like “pizza 94089” and you get a list of pizza places with phone numbers that you can click to call.
- The CIT310 uses a different wavelength from the common 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz frequencies, so it doesn’t interfere with my wireless network.
What’s my favorite thing about this phone?
That it’s easy. Easy to set up (15 minutes from opening the box to making my first call) and easy to use. I even have my mother making calls on it. I don’t think she realizes she’s using a computer to make calls, but why go into the details with her? 
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
UPDATE: Here’s a review of the CIT310 from PC Magazine.
More info:
Linksys CIT310 info page
Buy it on Amazon.com
January 29, 2007 on 3:41 pm | In News | 20 Comments
I don’t know about you, but I think IM’ing in a box all the time can start to get dull. So I recently loaded the new Avatar World plug-in to spice things up. Now I chat Avatar-to-Avatar with my friends in rooms with fun backgrounds, swap files using our Avatar World suitcases, and there are secret words I’ve discovered that add unexpected fun to my chats (hint: try typing “toddler” or “bbq” while you’re in a room).
If you do venture into Avatar World, be prepared to change your attire often to match your room (beachwear is a must). Customize further with commands like “decorate ferrari” which inserts a matching photo of a Ferrari car from Yahoo! Image Search into your room. Just replace ferrari with another item you want to put in your world.
For those of you interested in the technical details, Avatar World was created by Xavier Legros, Kai Arnold and Justin Willow on our platforms team (and even some debugging on my laptop). This plug-in leverages the powerful feature set of the Yahoo! Messenger SDK to offer features like file sharing and conferencing. To offer the floating user interface of Avatar World, the team used Win32 API’s to create transparent windows that host flash controls and in certain cases Internet Explorer controls to host HTML and JavaScript. Special thanks to Amanda Walker for creating the cool flash animations (those secret keywords…) and Matt Au for developing the original idea.
Give Avatar World a try and invite friends to your room for a group chat. Then let us know what you think of it here on the blog or in the Avatar World group. I’m off to find some new Avatar accessories…
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
P.S. – If you figure out any more of the secret words, let me know!
January 26, 2007 on 10:01 am | In News | 42 Comments
New Build: 8.1.0.239
There is a new build of the Windows version of Yahoo! Messenger now available for download (8.1.0.239). It includes improvements in voice quality and sign-in as well as fixes for minor bugs with the new Microsoft Windows Vista operating system that launches on January 30.
If you’re unsure which version you’re using, go to the Help menu in Yahoo! Messenger and choose “About Yahoo! Messenger.” If your version number is 8.1.0.238 or lower, you should download the latest version.
New Free Voice Feature
Now you can use Yahoo! Messenger to call toll-free U.S. numbers that start with area code 800, 888, 877, or 866*. We added this feature to support a new click-to-call advertising campaign for the scary movie “The Messengers,” opening February 2 in the U.S.
If you’ve never called a land line phone using Yahoo! Messenger’s Phone Out service, calling a toll-free numbers is a great way to try the service for free without having to sign up first. Click a phone number below to make a toll-free call right now. (You must be signed into Messenger and using version 8.1).
Call Tell-Me, a directory of information, people, and businesses: 1-800-555-8355
Happy calling!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
*Calling features are available to users only on these versions of Yahoo! Messenger: U.S., Yahoo! Telemundo (in Spanish), Spain, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore.
January 24, 2007 on 11:11 am | In News | 20 Comments
Every few months, we have Hack Day here at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. Employees are challenged to create unique products or features using Yahoo! products.
Most Hack Day creations are not available to the public, but we thought you’d enjoy seeing how we got creative with Yahoo! Messenger at the last Hack Day:
Emoticon Shortcuts
Apart from the basics like 
and 
, emoticon shortcuts can be hard to type. David Cortright, an interaction designer, created a program that enables mnemonic shortcuts for emoticons. Rather than typing 
to send 
in your IM, just type “!party”, which will instantly transform into the actual text string (helpful with hidden emoticons). Lucky for you, Emoticon Shortcuts is available for download.
Flickr Alerts
If you’re a Flickr addict like Yahoo! engineer Allen Tom, you’ll love this tool that alerts you when new photos are added to a Flickr group.
Allen frequents the Flickr group “Guess Where SF“, where users upload hard-to-identify pics from around San Francisco. The first to identify a photo gets bragging rights, so Allen likes to know right away when new photos arrive. With his hack, Allen gets a pop-up window in Yahoo! Messenger that shows the latest additions to the group, so he can jump in and start IDing the pics. Go get ‘em, Allen!
Map’im
Plug-in master John Dunning created this hack to bring the power of Yahoo! Maps to Messenger. It’s really useful if, like me, you have lots of street addresses in your Yahoo! Address Book.
Click a contact in your list and the Map’im plug-in displays the contact’s map location. The map marker remains, so if you select a number of contacts, you can zoom out and see where they live in relation to each other. Map’im is available now, plus check out other handy plug-ins created by John.
Feeling inspired? If you’re a developer — or just play one on TV — check out the Software Development Kit (SDK) for Yahoo! Messenger plug-ins. You might just create the next great plug-in that millions will enjoy. Happy hacking!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
January 22, 2007 on 10:20 am | In News | 292 Comments
We appreciate all your enthusiasm and comments on our blog. We do read the comments, and it’s clear there are concerns around Yahoo! Messenger’s chat rooms. So we want to address some of them.
Right off the bat, we want to let you know there was an outage the weekend of January 12th that prevented users from signing into the chat rooms. This is uncommon, and we were able to fix it. We appreciated your patience as we tackled the issue.
As some of you know, since Yahoo! Messenger’s chat rooms began the Internet has evolved and as a result, we’ve seen problems occur in the rooms with things like bots and other disruptions that can take the fun out of a chat. We are aware of these problems and continue to work on solutions.
Recently, we discontinued our web-based chat rooms. If you were using web-based chat, we hope you’ve installed the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger and started using its chat rooms. Since this changeover, we fixed a few bugs. Recently, if you clicked to ignore someone in a chat room, the next time you signed in to Messenger, the person was no longer on your ignore list (so you had to ignore the person again). We have corrected this to preserve ignore lists, so if you still have that problem, please upgrade to the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger. Also, if you’re not seeing chat text when you’re in a room, turn off the Messenger preference that is set to ignore anyone who is not on your contact list. You’ll find this under the Messenger menu > Preferences > Ignore list. (Thanks to reader “bart” for the tip!)
We also know many of you enjoyed our user-generated public chat rooms, which were discontinued. We will not be able to bring them back as a feature. But as a Yahoo! Messenger user, you can easily set up a private conference over IM with many friends at once.
Thanks again for your feedback and comments about your chat room use. They are important to us, and we are working on solutions to make the chat experience better. We’ll keep you updated here on the blog.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
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