On Friday, Yahoo let it be known they added a small tweak to Yahoo Messenger 9 for Windows.
When the latest version of Yahoo's chat application launched, it broadcast as secondary status messages certain activities within the Yahoo network, like refreshing your avatar. Now the service has expanded to record your doings on roughly twenty networks outside of Yahoo--like Twitter, Last.fm, YouTube, Pandora, and Yelp--as well as tracking your whereabouts more thoroughly within Yahoo's network, like the sports, movies, and shopping silos.
Here's how you sign up.
(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)Sharing is optional, of course, but to get it, you'll need to make sure you've got a Yahoo profile set up. Then click 'Updates', then 'Manage my Updates' to pick share sites within Yahoo. To set up status-sharing from outside services, you'll need to add your login name via the 'Share More' tab. Set-up was fast and easy, especially with the search field that lets you enter a common username to find multiple accounts that share your log-in.
Is it notable? Not really. It's a small tweak that might take some work off the hands of obsessive status-updaters, but given Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's vow to whip Yahoo's engineering corps into shape, this isn't the kind of 'news' we expect to see going forward.
Note, CNET's parents company, CBS Interactive, also owns Last.fm.
Related story: 10 days of IMing with Trillian Astra beta
Yahoo Pingbox
(Credit: Yahoo Inc.)Yahoo Messenger 9.0 may look dramatically different if you're seeing it for the first time after using Version 8 of the desktop-chat client. While most advanced features remain, its glammed-up and slightly rearranged interface could throw you. (It did my mom, who demanded I reinstate the previous version. Aw, silly Luddite.)
Or perhaps you're stuck trying to import contacts or have a question about the new Pingbox module. Whatever your query, the Yahoo Messenger team is offering to answer them all during a live online workshop on Monday, October 6 at 3 pm (PDT). You can submit questions in advance.
Of the handful of additions to functionality in Yahoo Messenger 9.0, the Pingbox messaging module will likely generate the most questions. The new feature lets Web site owners embed a customized chat window on their personal pages. Creating one requires going online and using Yahoo's wizard to customize the look. It also means dropping the embed code onto your page or pages and working through the settings to tweak how you'd like to interact with your guests.
After guests initiate a chat with you, they'll appear as temporary contacts on your Messenger list--you can then save them, block them, and so on. As a module that integrates a sales and customer-service spin, Pingbox is not only a more complex effort, but also the feature with the most potential for monetization and growth.
Although my personal tastes run toward open-source, multiprotocol support when choosing a messaging app, there's a lot to be said for Yahoo Messenger 9. For one thing, if most or all of your friends are on YIM, then there's no reason to forgo the benefits of using the main client.
YIM 9 retains all the voice, chat, and drag-and-drop capabilities of its predecessors, and adds a lot more visual pizazz and some key functionality. One is contact importing, which scours your other IM, e-mail, and social-networking accounts for friends who are also signed up on Yahoo IM. You can then ask some or all of your friends to add you and can invite others to sign up. Another favorite new trick is the ability to see images and videos displayed inside the chat window when you or a pal drops in a public URL.
Other notable changes include the visual skin picker to switch up the look, and Pingbox, a chat window site owners can embed to chat with visitors in real time. Users should note that the download stub will finish installing the program online, and that the download bundles the Yahoo Toolbar. There are a lot of extras rolled into YIM, and you can opt out of them by choosing Custom Install after running the executable. Be wary of the heavy-handed Yahoo branding and keep an eye out for otherwise hidden smilies, but these are minor quibbles.
- prev
- 1
- next
