The Wacky(B) World of Yahoo! Messenger
March 2, 2007 on 9:00 am | In News |
If you’ve spent time on our blog, you may have come across a mention of a site called WackyB. I was first turned onto it about a year ago when someone on our team said “Have you seen WackyB? It’s an awesome site all about Messenger!”. I couldn’t have said it better myself – it is awesome and as a Yahoo! Messenger user, I think you’ll find it a really fun, useful place to get information, tips and to connect with other users.
WackyB was officially born in 1996 when New Zealander “Bee” set up the http://wackyb.co.nz domain. Bee started by offering general technical tidbits for Yahoo! Messenger and since then, it’s developed into a valuable resource with helpful articles, how-to’s, newsletters, and message board forums that cover many different IM services.
On top of keeping up with all things IM, Bee and fellow WackyB’r Andy have developed several plug-ins and utilities for Yahoo! Messenger. The YEmotePLUS plug-in (149,993 downloads and counting!) gives you access to the full menu of emoticons, including the hidden ones, right in your IM window.
The Spoken Status/Status Alert plug-in gives you total control over the status alerts for your friends. Configure individual sounds not only for each friend but also for each action (Online/Offline/Status Change/New message). I have mine programmed to play a harrowing scream sound when my boss comes online. Ha ha, just kidding boss!
For those of you interested in extra conversation security, check out WackyB’s Off the Record plug-in which allows individual “off the record” messages to be exchanged without having to turn off archiving on either side.
We also recently posted a hack that adds tabs to Yahoo! Messenger 8.1, making it easy to manage multiple conversations in one window. It was created at Yahoo! but was first available for download from WackyB. Plus Andy recently developed an additional utility that irons out most of the bugs.
I hope you’ll spend some time exploring WackyB and save it as a favorite site. Thanks to Bee, Andy and the community at WackyB for all their creativity, passion and excitement for Yahoo! Messenger.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
Other webpages created by Bee and Andy
http://www.stickercam.com
http://www.wackyb.info/
http://www.bee.geek.nz/
http://www.wackyb.com/
Comment by Greg — March 2, 2007 #
Good write up, wackyb has been around for quite some time.
I am VERY glad to see you folks over at Yahoo! are finally taking the correct approach when dealing with the *third-party* community.
Comment by UnSaKreD — March 2, 2007 #
I always release my new programs at WackyB first. Wackyb is the best site on the internet for Messenger related Resources. I am good friends of Bee , Andy and Jester and the rest of their Team. I am currently digging into information and Developing some good Programs relating to Yahoo Instant Messenger and other clients. I also will be making some plugins soon and sending them along to the Yahoo Team. I dont have a website anymore as the Legal Team at Yahoo took my website away. It was registered with TuCows which is Cool Yahoo. http://www.cool-yahoo.com - at one time it was very good for Messenger Related Resources and information. I had over 10,000 Registeed forum users until one day i got a big Pack sent though the door by Yahoo with a list of 1738 Domains they was taking away from people with the Word Yahoo in them. They have filed a lawsuit against me just for having the domain cool-yahoo.com - I understand Yahoo is a registered Trademark but the word yahoo after the first word should be allowed. yahoo is just a “yahoooooo” and theres also a company called Yahoo. The site was closed down a year ago and i not paid for the hosting since as thats when the legal yahoo team took action on the domain on a site i worked very hard on. I even had a disclaimer to say we was not part of Yahoo. I got Servers at this time too and worked too hard on that site, I wont work hard coding a good website again because the next domain will probably get taken away from me aswell.
Today i just make programs and release them at wackyb when they are ready. Its the only site i hang out at now and support.
Keep up the good work at WackyB Andy and Bee - i see you come up with a idea to make the wackyb.com forums read only and have messenger related stuff at wackyb.co.nz - thats cool good work
Comment by vb_packets — March 3, 2007 #
Thank you to talk about Andy and Bee on your Hall of fame… They are so great :o)
Comment by Olivier D. alias ze kat — March 3, 2007 #
Come check out my new thread “Yahoo! Messenger Versions Available” thread. All new design, supported versions of Yahoo! messenger listed by country.
http://www.wackyb.co.nz/vb/
Comment by Cchris78 — March 3, 2007 #
Read about the All New Yahoo! Toolbar & Yahoo! Messenger Integration, at:
http://www.wackyb.co.nz/vb/
Comment by Cchris78 — March 4, 2007 #
Yay!!! Good ol’ WackyB
Nice writeup, Yahoo (hmmmm, coincidental with the launch this week of http://yahooxtra.co.nz !!?
)
Being a longtime Yahoo devotee AND a Kiwi just got much much better! __º¿º__
Comment by Eagle_Kiwi (Ian - N.Z.) — March 5, 2007 #
i think its great
Comment by jen — March 10, 2007 #
I thought WackyB was cool until Bee herself decided to attempt to tarnish other developer’s reputations (ourselves and Chet Simpson’s) simply for posting on this blog messages that she disagreed with. Childish shenanigans is what their “community” is about, the whole hive of them.
I’m wondering how much bee pollen it costed Andy and Bee to get a spot on this blog? While Wacky may have contributed to Yahoo! for years (throughout their own community) their work is far from the most influential of all the contributors. Big Blue Ball is what Wacky Bee should’ve been. Now that stung!
Adam
Torseq Technologies
Comment by Adam [Torseq Technologies] — March 19, 2007 #