Filed under: Software, Internet Tools
Yahoo! Messenger 3 adds voice, in beta
Our friends on the Yahoo! Messenger team dropped us a note alerting us to their newly released Yahoo! Messenger 3 Beta 3 for the Mac. What's the big news with this beta? As you might recall previous betas made Messenger a Universal Binary and added tabbed chats. New in this beta: voice calling.That's right, you can now do the following with Yahoo! Messenger, just like our Windows running comrades:
- Make free computer to computer calls
- Sign up for a Phone Out account which will allow you to call regular phones with Yahoo! Messenger
- Send free text messages to cell phones (though the receiver might get charged for the text)
- Receive calls from phones on your Mac if you have a Phone In account (these accounts aren't free)

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alan said 11:24PM on 3-25-2008
Question: can this version talk to people on MSN, like Windows users have been able to?
Reply
Karl said 1:05AM on 3-26-2008
You can talk to MSN users in the Windows client? I'm sure the Windows client will be surprised to learn that.
Alan said 1:07AM on 3-26-2008
Or perhaps I am crazy, and it is MSN users that can talk to Yahoo peoples.
Christopher Wilson said 8:38AM on 3-26-2008
@karl:
http://messenger.yahoo.com/feat_interop.php
Karl said 6:53PM on 3-26-2008
@Christopher Wilson
That page says they can IM MSN users, nothing new there the Mac version has done that since Beta 1. The OP said talk is if they could hold voice conversations with them, that page makes no mention of such a feature.
Alan said 6:57PM on 3-26-2008
@Karl: actually, I was talking about neither IM nor voice. I was talking about signing in with MSN credentials. Sorry I wasn't clear enough. A friend of mine uses a Yahoo UID to sign in the Windows Live Messenger, and not Yahoo's client.
Morgan said 2:23AM on 3-26-2008
Call me paranoid, but my current install of YM3 (beta 2) started crashing constantly on me today, and now I read that there's a beta 3 out today. Maybe it really is time to switch to Adium...
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Sam Katz said 12:21PM on 3-26-2008
Don't be silly. Your beta started crashing on you because there was a bunch of new server-side technology which the existing program couldn't handle. the new beta fixes that. it is a beta. It will crash sometimes.
DrWho said 9:19AM on 3-26-2008
I have to use windows at work, I wish yahoo would add tabbed chats to the windows Messenger, even the beta for version 9 doesn't have tabbed chats. And the mac version does, how odd!
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Luigi193 said 9:34AM on 3-26-2008
Are your AOL over lords going to be happy???
LOL, just kidding!
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Able-X said 12:34PM on 3-26-2008
I just wish they'd make photoshare work in the mac version, that's really irritating.
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Howie Isaacks said 11:57PM on 3-26-2008
OK... Nice but, how long is Yahoo! for Mac going to be in beta??? And why does the webcam function suck? It works at a very slow frame rate... Totally pathetic.
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Seth A said 2:57AM on 3-27-2008
Oh, hey, wow. I have been waiting for this? Oh, and only a year after my girlfriend moved to Australia and we found out the mac version didn't voice chat, so we switched to Skype. Yup, thanks for nothing Yahoo. I mean, honestly. I was checking Yahoo's site every day for months for this, and it comes a year later. And, isn't it about time it goes out of Beta. I will download, but she has moved back, so it is really no use anymore. :-P
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Denden said 2:59AM on 3-27-2008
This is nice but I really wish Adiumn would add voice and video support sometime soon. That is something I truly miss since making the switch to Mac.
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