March 6, 2007 on 9:23 am | In Avatars | 10 Comments
It’s great fun to change the clothes, backgrounds and accessories on your Avatar. But when you sign out of Messenger, that’s the end of your Avatar until next time, right? Nope! You can display your Avatar on a personal web page, blog or even MySpace page using the handy export tools on the Avatars site.
To get started, visit the Export your Avatar page (you may need to sign in first). You can choose to export a small (48×48 pixels) or large (150×235) version of your Avatar in JPG or PNG graphic format. Then just copy the snippet of HTML code that’s provided and drop it into your blog, MySpace page or other webpage to display your Avatar. When you update your Avatar on Yahoo!, it will automatically update on your page too.
You can also save the image of your Avatar to send in email, upload to your Yahoo! 360 profile, or even to use as a display image in another IM program. Visit the Download your Avatar page to get started.
One drawback to the exported or downloaded Avatar – it’s a static image that doesn’t animate with the facial expressions and moods that you normally see when you’re using Yahoo! Messenger. But leave it to our friends at WackyB to tackle that challenge and find a solution! Check out the WackyB article “I’ve borrowed my Yahoo! Avatar” to find out how to embed an animated version of your Avatar into a webpage.
If you’ve got your Avatar appearing on your website or blog, drop us a note in the comments with the web address so we can check it out!
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
February 6, 2007 on 3:38 pm | In Avatars, Fun Stuff | 37 Comments
A few weeks ago, some members of the Yahoo! Messenger team traveled through Vietnam en route home from a conference in Asia. With the help of some local Yahoos in Ho Chi Minh City and a research company, they set out to interview some Messenger users.
Billed as an immersion trip, their goal was to observe and interview Vietnamese users using Yahoo! Messenger in different environments. They interviewed users from 16 to 25 years of age in their homes and in Internet cafes.
In Vietnam, Yahoo! Messenger is the most popular instant messaging application, and our users there are really enthusiastic about it. While we do offer Messenger in more than a dozen languages, we don’t yet offer it in Vietnamese, so these users all use the U.S. version.
Despite a possible language barrier, they take full advantage of Yahoo! Messenger and especially love the expression features like emoticons, audibles, Avatars, webcam, and IMVironments — they seem to use every feature we offer. Another thing we learned: Just changing the location of a single button in a new release can wreak havoc on their usage patterns!
The team met several users who were especially passionate about Messenger and Avatars. As thanks for their participation in the research, we wanted to do something special for them. So with a few snaps of the digital camera, we brought their images home and sent them to the Avatars team. Our artist went to work, and a few days later, their Avatars were born.
These new Avatars based on our Vietnamese friends will make their official debut on February 27. If you haven’t been by in awhile, check out our Avatars site. There are new accessories and outfits added often, so you never have to wear the same thing twice.
Sarah Bacon
Product Manager
UPDATE: The Vietnam avatar clothing is now available. Go to the Full Outfit category on Yahoo! Avatars to check them out.
January 29, 2007 on 3:41 pm | In Avatars | 22 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!
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