YahooMessenger posts

Yahoo! Messenger 3 adds voice, in beta

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Mar 25th, 2008

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)

I gave the new features a whirl, so check out our gallery with screenshots of the new features, or head on over to the Yahoo! Messenger blog and watch their screencast.

Gallery: Yahoo! Messenger Beta 3

Tags: yahoo!, yahoo!-messenger, yahoo-messenger, yahoomessenger

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta 2

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Sep 6th, 2007

After months of waiting Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta 2 is now available for download. New in this version of the beta are:

Tabbed conversations, as pictured above
Access to Yahoo! Chat rooms
More emoticons (to combat those times when there isn't an emoticon available to express how you're feeling)
Better Webcam and file transfer performance
Message archiving

Yahoo! Messenger for Mac 3.0 Beta 2 requires OS X 10.4, but it is free. I had the pleasure of meeting with the Yahoo! Messenger team a few times, and I know they are Mac users and are very receptive to user input. If there is anything you want to see in Messenger sound off in the comments.

Tags: do you yahoo?, DoYouYahoo?, yahoo, yahoo messenger, YahooMessenger

Filed under: Software, Video, Internet Tools

CamCamX: Spice up your video chats and get more out of them

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Aug 20th, 2007

For those who want to spice up their video conferences and would like to use their iSight (or other webcam) with more than one application simultaneously, CamCamX might just be the app for you. Offering an old-school UI for mixing movies and images into your video conferences, CamCamX allows you to play digital broadcaster with most of the webcam-enabled apps for Mac OS X. In addition to mix-master-iSight with your video and media, CamCamX also allows you to use more than one webcam app at once, allowing you to, for example, hop into a video chat while also providing a live webstream or recording yourself with QuickTime (though, for some strange reason, you apparently need to purchase iChatUSBCam if you want iChat to fit into your CamCamX workflow). While the UI isn't the most beautiful thing this side of the HIG, it's a powerful concept that mimics Apple's upcoming iChat Theater in Leopard, but seems to open a few more doors since it works with apps like Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and even Flash.

A watermarked demo of CamCamX is avaialble from VJ Software, while a license costs $29.00, with 3-year and lifetime upgrade memberships available for $59 and $99, respectively.

Tags: Flash, iChat, iChat Theater, IchatTheater, Skype, video, video conferencing, VideoConferencing, Yahoo Messenger, YahooMessenger

Filed under: Software

Yahoo! Messenger team needs your input

by Michael Rose (RSS feed) on Jul 3rd, 2007

It's a question that keeps many developers up at night: should they maintain backward OS compatibility at the expense of release speed and new features, or just dump support for older releases in the interest of getting out a new version as quickly as possible? The Yahoo! Messenger for Mac team is facing this quandary now, and you can help them make the call by responding to the version poll here. Want a quick release of a Tiger-only Messenger? Or a longer wait for a 10.3-compatible build? Make yourself heard.

Thanks, Lucky.

Tags: poll, yahoo messenger, YahooMessenger

Filed under: Macworld, Software, Internet Tools, Beta Beat

Yahoo! Messenger sneak peek

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Jan 12th, 2007

There was a time when Yahoo! Messenger on OS X, well, sucked. That time has long since passed thanks to the great Mac focused team that Yahoo! has created (the Mac team may be small, but they are passionate). I was able to sit down with Matthew Skyrm, Director of Product Management for Yahoo! Messenger, and take a look at what Yahoo! is cooking up for the next beta. It looks good folks, really good.

The UI won't be changing too much, but it will be modified to allow for some new features:

Tabs - this one is huge. We all know tabs, and the team decided to go with the classic one IM window with tabs on the bottom. If you close the window, it only closes the Tab that you are currently in (which is a nice touch).
Voice chat support - one of the most highly requested features it would seem. You can make free computer to computer calls and you can even call phones (and have a phone number associated with your Yahoo! Messenger) thanks to Yahoo! Voice.
A new notifications section - one of the nice things about Yahoo! Messenger is that you can IM someone who isn't online and they'll get that IM when they sign on. Sadly, that means if you haven't been online in a while you can face an onslaught of windows when you start up Messenger. Tabs remedy this somewhat, but the good folks at Yahoo! went one step further and create a new section in Messenger that will show you, in your buddy list, any IMs you might have missed. You will find your voice mail here, yes you will be able to get voice mail on Yahoo! Messenger.
Archiving - finally the next beta will offer a way for you to archive your messages, and not just in an ugly text file. It is clear that the team spent some serious time on the UI for the archives, and it shows. The archives also offer full Spotlight integration so now you can search your IMs just as easily as you can search the rest of your Mac.

I tried to get a firm date for the release of this beta, but that Matthew is cagey. He told me to expect it sometime in the next several months because he would 'rather be vague than late.' Fair enough. This beta of Yahoo! Messenger is looking to be a very compelling upgrade, my only complaint is that I didn't get one bit of Yahoo! swag. Perhaps next Macworld.

Tags: macworld, macworld07, mwsf07, yahoo, yahoo messenger, YahooMessenger

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Universal Binary

Infinite Loop interviews Yahoo! Messenger dev

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on Oct 17th, 2006

When we first came across the beta of Yahoo! Messenger 3 we were impressed. This feels like an OS X app, not some crappy Windows port! Then we pretty much forgot about the whole thing, but Jeff Smykil at Infinite Loop didn't. He wanted to know why Messenger suddenly didn't suck on the Mac, and he wanted to know who was responsible.

It turns out that Tristan O'Tierney, who used to work on the Colloquy project amongst other things, has had a large part in making Messenger 3 beta what it is. Jeff interviews Tristan about all things Mac at Yahoo!, so go check it out.

Tags: yahoo, yahoo messenger, yahoo!, YahooMessenger

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