Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye when you’re IM’ing with a friend. You, or maybe your friend, always want to get that last word in, share just one more link, tell one more story.
Then there are those friends that just don’t know how to really say goodbye. You think the conversation is over and “ping!”, a new message comes in. How do you get them to say goodbye?
Thankfully Yahoo! Messenger has a few ways for you to get your message across, in the most humorous way of course.
We’ve got a set of Goodbye audibles that let you impersonate a number of silly characters who all have their own excuse for why they need to skedaddle. “Gotta go..my meds are kicking in!” says one nervous looking fellow. A pony-tailed woman with a choke dollar purrs “Gotta go. My parole officer needs to use the computer.”
Then there’s the audible that won’t shut up – the flight attendant with the incessant “Buh-bye. Bye now. Buh-bye.” And rather than lie to your friend about a meeting you have to run to, just tell them the truth with the spectacled pooch: “Gotta go, Gotta go. I gotta pee!”
We’ve also got a few emoticons that fit the goodbye ritual. There’s the “wave” emoticon which also doubles as a hello emoticon. I’m also a fan of “talk to the hand” emoticon . It’s a more abrupt way to end the conversation, but it has its uses. If you’ve really had enough, try the “not listening” emoticon .
One of my favorite ways to sign off IM? The “hug” emoticon.
And since it’s a cinch to share and watch videos in the Yahoo! Messenger conversation window, you can always send them a goodbye classic (watch below).
This week we launched a new integration with Delicious.com, Yahoo!’s handy bookmark storage and sharing service.
Now when you send or receive a link in an IM conversation, you can easily save it to your Delicious account and share it with friends. Here’s how it works…
Imagine that during an IM conversation, a friend sends you a link that you want to save. It could be a cool new website, important driving directions or a memorable video.
To save it, hover your mouse on the hyperlinked web address and look for a small “Bookmark” button nearby. Click it and a window will open up where you can enter and save details about the link to your Delicious account.
You can enter in notes about the link (“Where Sarah stayed in New Zealand”) as well as tags that will help other Delicious users find your link (new zealand, eco resort, four stars).
If you already have an account with Delicious, you may need to first visit Delicious.com to link it to your Yahoo! ID. But if you’re new to Delicious, you can create your account using your Yahoo! ID right in Yahoo! Messenger.
Delicious is not just a place to store your bookmarks, it’s also a place to see what’s hot and trending and find other Yahoo! users that are into your favorite websites. But you can use Delicious just as a private place to store your bookmarks. When saving a link, just click the “Mark as Private” box.
Yahoo! Messenger also supports the sharing of Delicious.com updates. So when you save a link to Delicious, your friends will see your latest update in Yahoo! Messenger, on their profile page, in Yahoo! Mail etc. It’s a great way to share what sites you’re into at the moment. You can always turn off Delicious updates on the Manage My Updates page on your Yahoo! profile.
The Yahoo! Messenger / Delicious.com feature is available to users on Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 and 10. So what are you waiting for? Go try it out and start sharing your favorite links with friends.
As a Yahoo! Messenger user, you’re used to seeing ads when you’re chatting with friends. We know you see ads all over the Internet, so it’s always a challenge for us to serve up compelling ads that are unique.
This weekend you’ll see ads in Yahoo! Messenger for Discovery Channel’s new Life series, which begins March 21. Narrated by Oprah Winfrey, Life is an 11-part series about the natural world around us, and is the follow up to the critically acclaimed series, Planet Earth.
Rather than just offer up the usual banner ads, we’ve partnered with Life to integrate some fun Messenger functionality into their ads. If you see a Life ad in Yahoo! Messenger, be sure to click to expand it. You can watch a video preview of the series and then with just a click, share it with your IM friends, update your status to tell your friends about the show, or even change your display image to one of the cool animal images from the show.
While we know ads can sometimes distract you from what you’re doing in Yahoo! Messenger, we hope you’ll find that these special Life ads instead enhance your IM experience by giving you something fun to share with your friends.
One of our lesser known but very useful products is the Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox. With a copy and paste of some code, you can embed a chat window into your website, blog or social networking page. Then when visitors come to your page, they can see when you’re online and initiate a private IM conversation with you.
My friend Jim has a Pingbox on his neighborhood blog. While he’s on Yahoo! Messenger all day, his status says “Available” in his Pingbox. When visitors come to his site, he can see the counter change next to the Pingbox in his contact list. If someone wants to chat with him, they simply start typing in the Pingbox on the website, which in turn opens up a new IM conversation for Jim. His visitors can remain anonymous or give themselves a nickname while they chat.
One of the greatest things about Pingbox is that there is no need for anyone to know your Yahoo! ID or for you to know theirs. In fact visitors to your site don’t even need a Yahoo! ID to start chatting with you. You can also turn your Pingbox on or off right from your Yahoo! Messenger 10 contact list, so if you find you’re being interrupted too often by chatty visitors, you can go dark for awhile.
Jim says one of the things he really likes is that when he hovers on the Pingbox visitors in his contact list, it will show him what page on his site that visitor is on. But mostly he likes to see the number of people that are passing through his site all day and be available to them. He says he’s gotten some good tips about neighborhood stories from his Pingbox chats.
If you have your own blog, website or social networking page, it’s easy to add a Pingbox. Just visit the Yahoo! Messenger Pingbox Studio and click the “Create a Pingbox” button. You can customize your background, text size, display name, and whether or not you want to show your display image. You can even put in a custom message that users will see in the Pingbox when you’re online, or when you’re offline. Once you’re done, you’ll receive some code that you can copy and paste into your site.
Then just login to Yahoo! Messenger using the same Yahoo! ID under which you created your Pingbox and voila – you’ll see a new group in your contact list and if you have visitors, a count next to the group name. Note that in order to appear online and receive messages from your Pingbox, you need to be signed in to Yahoo! Messenger 10 or Yahoo! Messenger for Mac. However unlike version 10, the Mac version does not display your Pingbox visitors in your contact list.
Do you use a Pingbox on your website, blog or social networking page (e.g. Facebook, MySpace)? Tell us about your experience in the comments.
One of my fellow Yahoos, Victor Tsaran, was on a local morning news show this week, talking about his work. Victor is a program manager on the Accessibility team here at Yahoo!.
The Accessibility team’s charter is to work with product teams, including Messenger, to make our technologies as usable as possible for disabled users.
Seeing Victor on TV reminded me of the interview I did with him in early 2007, not long after the blog started. In the video below, Victor shows me how a blind person can use Yahoo! Messenger. Close your own eyes, pretend your mouse is useless, and then think about how you would use Yahoo! Messenger.
With the help of screen reader software, a visually impaired user can enjoy the Internet and products like Yahoo! Messenger. This kind of software responds to a user’s key commands. It scans the page or application and reads the content aloud. In this way, visually impaired users can “hear” where they are on the screen or web page.
Because it reads the words aloud, a screen reader may sound wordy to people unaccustomed to it. But a visually impaired user who is adept at using the reader can set the audio playback at a lightening pace. When Victor demonstrated how he uses Yahoo! Messenger with a screen reader, it sounded to me like supersonic gibberish. But as you’ll see in the video below, Victor slowed it down for my (and perhaps yours) less able ears.
Needless to say, it gave me a unique perspective on what it’s like for a visually impaired user to use Yahoo! Messenger. For more about Victor – even his life outside of Yahoo! – check out this article and video from the Yahoo! Corporate Blog.
Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye when you’re IM’ing with a friend. You, or maybe your friend, always want to get that last word in, share just one more link, tell one more story. 
which also doubles as a hello emoticon. I’m also a fan of “talk to the hand” emoticon 
. It’s a more abrupt way to end the conversation, but it has its uses. If you’ve really had enough, try the “not listening” emoticon 
. 
This week we launched a new integration with 
One of my fellow Yahoos, Victor Tsaran, was on a 