Tag: messenger

Thoughts on the updated Windows Live Essentials Beta

Like many of you, I’ve been using the various Windows Live desktop applications for a long time now. Until fairly recently however, they all looked and felt different from one another. There wasn’t much cohesion. That changed when Microsoft began to make the UIs similar and launched the Windows Live Installer which integrated all the apps. Recently, they gave the suite a better name (Windows Live Essentials) and did even more work to achieve a consistent look and feel. On Monday, they released the latest beta refresh.

windows live

I have most of the apps installed – Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, and Toolbar. The only one I don’t have is Family Safety. I use Messenger, Photo Gallery, and Writer every day, and the others I use less. The install also includes the Office Outlook Connector, Office Live Add-In, Silverlight, and the Microsoft Sync framework.

I’m fairly impressed with the suite so far, but I still think it’s far from perfect. Here are a few of the things I really like:

  • The new icons look great and are consistent.
  • I love the simplified presence indicators in Messenger (these were in the previous beta too – now there’s just Available, Busy, Away, and Appear Offline).
  • In the old beta, Messenger would always sign out if I switched from Appear Offline to something else. That has been fixed, thankfully. Seems faster too.
  • Writer is easily the best blog publishing tool I’ve ever used. It just works the way I want it to. I don’t know what to say specifically, but it’s awesome.
  • Person recognition and tagging in Photo Gallery absolutely rocks! Very cool feature, useful too.

And here are a few things I really dislike:

  • Photo Gallery is ridiculously slow to load. Once it’s open it seems fine, but from launching the app to being ready to use takes forever. I’ve only got about 36 GB of photos on this machine, so I’m sure there are users with far more.
  • In Messenger, you can no longer control the color of your chat windows. It’s based on the theme/color of the person you’re chatting with. Not sure I like that…it’s a window on MY computer, after all.
  • Speaking of colors, I still don’t like that the apps are inconsistent. I can set Messenger to look black, but Writer looks grey (even though I’ve set the color to be the same as Messenger), and Photo Gallery looks light blue and lacks a color setting button. Why there isn’t a color setting like the one in Office 2007 is beyond me. It can’t be that hard!

In general, I like Windows Live Essentials. It’s definitely something I’d install when setting up a new computer. I look forward to the final release!

One Messenger Account, Multiple Computers

Post ImageMy favorite Skype feature appears to be coming to the next version of Windows Live Messenger! According to a cached LiveSide post, Windows Live Messenger 9 will get something called "Multiple Points of Presence Support". Essentially that means you can sign in using the same account from multiple places. Currently, if you sign in on your desktop and then try to sign in on your laptop, your desktop gets disconnected. Skype has had the ability to sign in from multiple computers for quite a while, and I absolutely love it!

I can’t believe it has taken Microsoft so long to add support for this feature. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has created multiple Live accounts just so that I can be signed in on multiple computers. That means you have multiple contact lists though, which kind of sucks. With this feature, and the ability to link Live accounts (released last month) I expect there will be a significant drop in the number of accounts in use.

Another obvious feature coming to WLM9 is support for hyperlinked status messages. Basically that means you’ll be able to click the Twitter link I always have in my status 🙂

Read: ZDNet

Gmail Chat

Post ImageFor years Hotmail and Yahoo Mail have showed the connection status of your Messenger buddies in the web mail interface. A simple icon depicts whether they are online or not, and a simple click can launch a chat window or do other things. Google has taken that idea one step further, enabling conversations to take place inside the browser itself:

Google on Monday was set to launch Gmail Chat, which will let users send instant messages with one click from their e-mail account, see when contacts are online and save the chat history like an e-mail message.

The application’s Quick Contacts list is synchronized with a user’s Google Talk friends list and automatically displays the people a user communicates with most frequently and shows their online status. Clicking on a contact listed as being online opens a chat window in the browsers.

I think this new Chat feature will be played up as “Google innovating in the email space yet again” when really, it’s a poor man’s version of MSN’s Web Messenger. I mean, when you cut through the crap (read: beta label) that’s all it is! And even then, a web messenger is really only useful if you’re on a public computer or something.

Considering I don’t use Google Talk, this new feature is pretty much useless for me.

Read: CNET News.com

MSN Messenger 7.5

Post ImageThere’s a new version of MSN Messenger out, with a bunch of cool features! This latest release, version 7.5, is part of the new strategy to release three versions a year. Here are some of the new features:

  • The UI has been updated again. The login screen now “matches” the rest of the program, showing your display picture, and a better view of your login options.
  • Voice Clips! Basically you can record short 15 second clips of audio that get sent to your contact and automatically played.
  • Apparently the audio has been drastically improved, though I haven’t tested it yet.
  • Patching! In the future, you’ll only have to download small patches to update the client, instead of a complete new program. Very cool!

Go ahead and download it now. There’s also a much more comprehensive list of features here.

I’m looking forward to testing out the new voice improvements. Microsoft has an enormous installed base for MSN Messenger, an installed base which seems to download new versions extremely fast, so they could create a viable Skype competitor almost over-night. Certainly MSN Messenger is a better VOIP platform than Google Talk, at least in terms of the user experience.

Read: MSN Messenger

New Messenger Plus! Released

A new version of the very popular MSN Messenger add-on Messenger Plus! was released yesterday. The new version definitely looks like it was made for version 7, with new icons all over the user interface. Here’s a few of the new changes:

  • A couple of optimizations have been made so that the contact list of Messenger 7 displays faster when Messenger Plus! is running (those of you with older computer will probably notice a big difference).
  • An important problem related to compatibility with MSN Messenger 7 has been found and fixed which is why a new version is released so soon.
  • The /sendfile command has been fixed for the final version of Messenger 7, however, no parameter is allowed for this command anymore (remember that you can use /dropfile too).
  • In several windows of Messenger Plus! (like the event viewer and the floating windows), the status icons now use the Messenger 7 style (in MSN Messenger 7 only).

There’s lots more to see in the program, and the full changelog is here. Go download it!