September 27, 2007 on 9:54 am | In Events, Fun Stuff | Add a Comment
Last Friday, Carnegie Mellon University celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Smiley emoticon with a gala reception for the students and faculty of the School of Computer Science.
The CMU students reserved their monthly TG (short for TGIF) social to recognize this remarkable icon of the Internet age – a simple three keystroke image that morphed into personalized renderings of the mood people wanted to put into a conversation or post. The original emoticon – 
– was first used by CMU Professor Scott Fahlman as a way to communicate humor when posting messages to some early online bulletin boards.
Yahoo! Messenger was part of the celebration as well. To mark the anniversary, Professor Fahlman and his colleagues started an annual student contest for innovation in technology-assisted, person-to-person communication. This Smiley Award, sponsored by Yahoo!, will carry a $500 cash prize. The first one will be given out in 2008.
Yahoo! Messenger engineer Anurag Gupta also attended the event, demonstrating some of our latest product innovations, including the humorous Shumbee prototype that came out of a Hack Day earlier this year. Check out more pictures from Smiley’s anniversary party.
Thanks to the crew at CMU’s School of Computer Science for throwing Smiley a great anniversary party. And special thanks to Ken Schmidt from Yahoo! Academic Relations for the event photos and report. Here’s to 25 more years of innovation in communication!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
September 24, 2007 on 2:59 pm | In Web version | 132 Comments
This afternoon we released an update to Yahoo! Messenger for the Web. This new release includes:
– Save your thumbs! Now you can send text messages (SMS) to your friends’ mobile phones for free, right from Yahoo! Messenger for the Web. When your friend replies, it comes back to you in Messenger. You’ll notice the contact list is now divided into two areas: regular IM contacts and Mobile Contacts.
SMS is only available when messaging to mobile phones in the U.S., India and Canada. Note that it’s free for you to SMS from Messenger but your friends will incur any applicable data charges from their carrier to receive your messages.
– Brand new, local language versions for Thailand and Indonesia.
– 9 new languages for the Indian version (Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada). After signing in at http://in.webmessenger.yahoo.com, start an IM with a friend and choose the Indian language you want to chat in from a drop-down menu.
If you haven’t already, give Yahoo! Messenger for the Web a try. There’s no download required, making it really handy when you’re at work, on the road or away from your own computer.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
September 21, 2007 on 4:36 pm | In Features | 7 Comments
Need some fresh faces on your friends list?
Try out our new online invitation to invite friends to join you on Yahoo! Messenger. All you need is their email address which you can type in or grab from your Yahoo! Address Book which is built right into the page.
You can customize your email invitation to include your Avatar or display image. And you can choose the theme that your friend will see in the email. Want to talk with them on a free PC-to-PC call? Choose the “Make free PC calls” option. Or choose “Play games” to invite them to meet you for a friendly game of checkers, dominoes or Toki Toki Boom.
When your friend receives your invitation in their email inbox, all they need to do is click the ‘Add Me’ link to put you in their Yahoo! Messenger friends list. If they don’t have Yahoo! Messenger yet, there’s a handy download link in the invite.
Invite your friends to Yahoo! Messenger
Speaking of inviting friends, don’t forget that Yahoo! Messenger also lets you IM with friends that use Windows Live Messenger. Adding them to your Yahoo! Messenger friends list is easy – click here to find out more.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
September 18, 2007 on 10:30 am | In Avatars | 25 Comments
Fashion Week blazed through New York City recently, but across the globe, India’s fashions were also on display. Yahoo! India partnered with the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW), powering the WIFW website and providing coverage of the fashion-filled extravaganza.
Apart from fashion buzz, designer and model profiles, event photos and videos, the site also featured a unique online contest, inviting users to vote for their favorite Yahoo! Fashion Avatar. Three top Indian designers – Malini Ramani, Raghvendra Rathore and Manish Arora – created their own personal version of a Yahoo! Avatar. Check out their designs and see who won.
For more India-inspired Avatar fashions, visit Yahoo! Avatars and search on “India”.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
September 13, 2007 on 1:44 pm | In Mac version, News | 478 Comments
Hi everyone,
Just a heads up that we’ll be upgrading the Yahoo! Messenger chat rooms this afternoon (approx. 2-5pm PST). As it’s taking place, you may encounter some instability when entering or using the chat rooms. We appreciate your patience while we complete the upgrade.
Once the upgrade is complete, you should find that the room lobby counts are more accurate and that the voice spammers you may have encountered at the launch of Captcha are no longer prevalent. In addition, we’re also introducing some changes to make Captcha more friendly for the visually impaired.
And thanks to everyone for your feedback on the new Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta 2 (rock on Adam!). The team is already plugging away on the next release to address some of the bugs and to add improvements to areas like the chat rooms. We’ll keep you posted!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
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