December 22, 2008 on 9:57 am | In Fun Stuff | 38 Comments
The blog will be on hiatus until the New Year, so we’ll see you in 2009. We hope everyone has a great holiday and a Happy New Year!
Cheers,
The Yahoo! Messenger team
December 17, 2008 on 10:15 am | In 9.0 version, Avatars, Fun Stuff, Pingbox | 4 Comments
December is already halfway done so time is running out to send your holiday greetings to your Yahoo! Messenger friends. Here’s a round-up of the fun things you can do:
Flickr IMVironment: Get in the winter spirit
Put some seasonal photos into your IM background with the Flickr IMV. It will open automatically to pictures from December, full of snowy landscapes and other winter favorites. Try it now with a friend or preview it yourself. (Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 only).
Holiday audibles
We’ve brought back the “Holiday” and “Holiday Hints” audibles. Send a mistletoe kiss to your sweetie or send a not-so-gentle reminder that you want to find a MP3 player under the tree this year. (Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 only)
Emoticarolers
Pick the Yahoo! Messenger Emoticarolers for your group, customize the lyrics to a favorite tune like “Jingle Bells” or “Deck the Halls”, and then send your e-card off to the digital doorsteps of your friends and family.
Pingbox holiday themes
Check out the new background themes in the Pingbox studio. If you’re already hosting a Pingbox on your website or social network profile, just edit its settings in the studio and your Pingbox will automatically get updated.
Elf your Avatar (or a friend’s)
Dress up your Avatar with holiday cheer for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or New Year’s. Or install the Yahoo! Avatars Makeover plug-in to create a new Avatar for your friends (plug-in for Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 only).
Happy Holidays!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
P.S. – In addition to all these Messenger holiday goodies, there’s also a Yahoo! holiday e-card called “Frosty’s Scrapbook”. Choose a background (or upload your own photo) and then drag and drop fun objects into your card to create your holiday scrapbook greeting.
December 11, 2008 on 3:16 pm | In 9.0 version, Pingbox | 5 Comments
This afternoon we released some updates to Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox. If you’re not familiar with Pingbox, it’s an application that once embedded into your blog, website or social network page, lets site visitors IM you without needing to download or even sign into Yahoo! Messenger. This latest release includes:
New themes
We’ve added 24 new background themes including some professional and seasonal ones that you can use to style your Pingbox.
Required nickname
for visitors
As a Pingbox owner, you now have the option to require your visitors to enter a nickname before they can begin chatting with you.
If you already have a Pingbox in use but want to update it to take advantage of the new nickname feature or themes, just return to the Pingbox studio to edit your Pingbox. You can also turn off or delete Pingboxes that you’ve created in the studio.
To create a new Pingbox for your social network page, blog or website, head over to the Yahoo! Messenger website. After creating your Pingbox, you’ll get the code you need to drop into your page.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
P.S. – If you’re having issues with your Pingbox always showing you as offline even when you’re online, please contact customer care for assistance. This is a known issue affecting some of our users.
December 9, 2008 on 2:12 pm | In Fun Stuff | 13 Comments
Into every holiday season must come a little cheer… and some singing emoticons.
This year, we’re pleased to introduce the Emoticarolers, a band of cheery singers with their own unique take on the holiday classics. Pick the Emoticarolers for your group, customize the lyrics to a favorite tune, and then send your e-card off to the digital doorsteps of your friends and family.
Once you’ve completed your Emoticaroler greeting, you can IM it to a friend, include it as a link in your Yahoo! Messenger status message, email it, or download the MP3.
Here’s one I put together for all of our readers and commenters here on the blog:
Happy Holidays!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
December 5, 2008 on 3:13 pm | In News | 101 Comments
We are performing maintenance on our systems due to an unplanned power equipment issue at one of our third-party co-location facilities.
During this time, some versions of Yahoo! Messenger and its features, like Pingbox, may be temporarily unavailable. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience. We expect this maintenance to last several hours.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
UPDATE 1 (9:12 PST): It will be another few hours before we’re completely back up. Thanks everyone for your patience.
UPDATE 2 (11:11 PST): Yes, we’re still down but working hard to get everything back online. Thanks
UPDATE 3 (11:42 PST): Maintenance is now complete and normal service has been restored. Thanks everyone for your patience. Have a good weekend.
