Unless you’ve been hiding under an analog rock today, you’ve come across the news about Apple’s new iPad device, due to hit stores in a couple of months.
The iPad is essentially a giant iPhone – 9.7-inch display, half-inch thick, and weighing in at just a pound and a half. It runs the iPhone OS on it so all the same apps you use on your iPhone, like Yahoo! Messenger for iPhone, will be available for the iPad. And several of the native apps like Mail and Calendar have been redesigned for the larger screen.
One feature that’s missing: a built-in camera. Even the iPhone has one. I was envisioning video calls on the iPad or being able to broadcast live video from it. Perhaps Apple will add one in a future release but some are wondering, could no camera be an iPad killer?
Do you plan to buy an iPad when it comes out? Take the poll below or leave a comment.
I had the pleasure of demo’ing Yahoo! Messenger 10 to some high school students that stopped by Yahoo! yesterday.
After a personal welcome from Yahoo! co-founder David Filo, they got a Yahoo! campus tour, drank in our free coffee and soda, and met with other product managers from Mail, Connected TV, Mobile, the Yahoo! homepage, and our Privacy/Policy team.
They were all enrolled in a tech-related class in their high schools, so they had a lot of great questions about Yahoo! Messenger and internet communications in general.
Of course I worried that I would seem old to them. So I switched my desktop wallpaper to Lady Gaga, queued up Rihanna on the Yahoo! Music Player plug-in, and played the Kei$ha “Tik Tok” video when I demo’d our inline media player feature. I’m sure they saw right through me…
There was talk about Facebook, but hardly any about Twitter. They wanted to know when we’d have video calling for groups of friends, and they wanted to know when people would be able to chat with whomever they wanted on IM, instead of just friends on their same network. That was a great segue for me to talk about our partnership with Windows Live Messenger. Hopefully we’ll open up to more networks in the future.
Despite the reputation of teens being totally uninhibited online, I found this group of students thoughtful and cautious about their online usage.
On a funny note, they asked if we would hire someone if they revealed they didn’t have a MySpace page or weren’t on Facebook. I said that’s ok because when I first interviewed at Yahoo!, I had an AOL email address.
Special thanks to the students for checking out Messenger 10 and for asking great questions. I have a feeling that some years from now, I’ll be managing new products that they come up with.
There are a lot of features in Yahoo! Messenger 10. Many of us only use a few on a regular basis and even then, we can get stuck in our routines for how we use them. It’s always fascinating to watch users interact with our product in our usability studies and other research. Sometimes they find or use a feature in a way we never intended (or imagined!).
While it’s a basic of Windows computing to use right-click menus, a lot of users don’t. And in the case of Yahoo! Messenger, they can offer an easy way to do things more quickly, like start a conversation, send a file, or begin a video call. All without opening an IM window first.
From your contact list, right-click on any contact to access the menu. Depending on the information you have for that contact, you’ll see a myriad of ways to connect with them – IM, voice call, video call, SMS, even email.
The right-click menu also gives you quick access to lots of other features, including stealth settings, your message archive for that contact, photo sharing and conference features.
So if it’s been awhile since your right mouse button has gotten a workout, give it a try.
Here’s a feature you may have stumbled across accidentally while using Yahoo! Messenger 10…
While you’re having a conversation in the IM window, you can use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to access previous messages you’ve sent.
To try it, hit the “Up” arrow on your keyboard when the cursor is in the IM window message box. The last message you sent to that contact will appear.
Hit it repeatedly and you’ll go back to your earlier messages sent; use the down arrow key to move forward through your messages.
I have found this feature handy when I need to resend a message to someone, or need to grab an earlier message I sent upon opening a new, blank conversation.
As you may know, Yahoo! Messenger 10 has a Y! Updates tab that lets you view your contacts in context of their latest updates. Those updates can range from their latest Messenger status update to the song they’re listening to on last.fm, or even their latest Twitter message.
While Yahoo! Messenger does not yet support the ability to send out tweets from within the program to your followers, or to receive the tweets of all the people you’re following (unless they all happen to be on your Yahoo! Messenger contact list), there are some other services that can enable this feature for you.
This week I learned about a new service called TweetSwitch that allows you to send and receive your Twitter messages within your IM program. They call themselves a “message forwarding service” for Twitter and they support a variety of IM programs, including Yahoo! Messenger.
Here’s how it works… First, you go to their website and click the “Sign in with Twitter” button. You’ll then be taken to a page on Twitter where you can sign in and link your Twitter account with the TweetSwitch service. After logging in, you’re redirected back to TweetSwitch where you can add the IM service on which you want to be able to send and receive tweets. Choose Yahoo! Messenger, then just type in your Yahoo! ID.
Note that the interface for linking your IM with TweetSwitch is a little wonky – you have to click the blue add (+) icon, add your ID, and then drag the Y! icon into the Step 1 box. When it’s completed, you’ll see a “Perfect!” completion message. If you want to also receive direct messages and replies/mentions from Twitter, be sure to configure the DMs and Mentions sections too.
After setup, you’ll be prompted within Yahoo! Messenger to confirm TweetSwitch as a friend. It will show up in your contact list and when you want to send tweets, you can click on it to get started. Similarly when tweets come in, they come in as IM messages from TweetSwitch.
From that point on, whenever you’re logged into Yahoo! Messenger (even on your mobile phone), any tweets that you normally see in your Twitter feed from those you’re following, as well as replies or retweets to your own messages, will show up as a message in an IM window. Receive all types or pick and choose what to receive – TweetSwitch lets you specify.
TweetSwitch allows you to send tweets out to your followers using a variety of commands. To start a new tweet, double click on your TweetSwitch contact, and type in “tweet” followed by your message. Then just hit Send the same way you’d send an IM message. To direct message someone type “dm [recipient's twitter ID]” followed by your tweet message. To see your last 20 tweets, type in “list / l”.
And if the deluge of tweets becomes too much, you can easily stop and start the service when needed. Just send your TweetSwitch contact the “stop” command; you’ll soon see a message confirming that service has been suspended. This doesn’t prevent you from sending or reading tweets elsewhere, it just suspends the TweetSwitch service from bringing them to you in Yahoo! Messenger. Similarly, message “start” and you’ll be up and running again.
I originally learned about TweetSwitch from a TechCrunch article. When I tried it a few days ago, there were some lags in the service, presumably because they got a quick flood of people trying it out. It is still in alpha mode so don’t expect perfection. But if you’d like to start receiving and sending your tweets within Yahoo! Messenger, TweetSwitch offers an easy way to do it.
Unless you’ve been hiding under an analog rock today, you’ve come across the news about Apple’s new iPad device, due to hit stores in a couple of months. 
I had the pleasure of demo’ing 
Here’s a feature you may have stumbled across accidentally while using 
