Is Messenger skinning in decline?


Posted by absorbation on Sat 06 Feb 2010 (17:06 GMT) (2896 views)
The days of MSN Messenger painted a vibrant community of designers who were keen to hack into the program's resources and create some polished, unique and excellent skins. When I joined the community back in February 2005 there was an vast array of high quality and imaginative skin designs to choose from, but today with Windows Live Messenger 2009, the community seems to have become stagnant.

Wait a minute, but surely skinning now has more depth and a smaller learning curve thanks to Messenger Plus! Live? While this is true the issue today is the end a thriving community to extrapolate anything from the available modern resources.


Looking back to MSN Messenger 7.5

For me MSN Messenger was the golden era of skin development. Granted there were significantly fewer releases, it is difficult to argue the quality of most end products were nothing short of spectacular. One could argue MSN Messenger was unattractive and users wanted something different, encouraging skinners? I disagree, looking at designs of the past there was just a different caliber of designer.



eBuddy for iPhone update adds several new features


Posted by absorbation on Tue 02 Feb 2010 (21:07 GMT) (5948 views)
Since the eBuddy app for the iPhone and iPod Touch was released back in July it has been a commercial success and is now one of the most popular apps to ever hit Apple's monopolistic mobile applications store. With over 4 million downloads the eBuddy team have been working hard to add new features in a timely fashion.


Pro users can now customise the app with themes


Pro users have the ability to customise their mobile eBuddy with themes, an important new feature within the update. As eBuddy supports push notifications it is desirable to constantly have the client running, even when you may be away. The new auto-away feature allows users to set their status to away after a specific time interval.

The new build also boasts several bug fixes and added customisation over the use of push notifications. All in all the eBuddy team have provided a solid update and users should update to receive the full benefit. If you're new to eBuddy for iPhone download the app from the store (for free) today.

Source: eBuddy blog - eBuddy for iPhone update



Research implies emoticon expressions are not universal


Posted by absorbation on Tue 02 Feb 2010 (01:02 GMT) (6623 views)
Recent research suggests different cultures interoperate facial expressions differently and this extends to the use of emoticons used throughout the Internet. The common smiley face we know - :-) - may not correlate with those within Eastern Asia.

Although the research is primarily concerned with natural, human facial expressions, the universities involved extrapolated further evidence to provide differences in interpretations between text emoticons:

A computer program given the same information from the eyes as the East Asian observers was similarly unable to distinguish between the emotions of disgust and anger, and fear and surprise.





Both these emoticons represent happiness. But which one do you associate happy with?


Differences were widely regarded to be related on the focus of a specific region of the face. While Asians typically scanned around the eyes, westerns tended to look at the face as a whole.

Source: BBC News - Facial expressions 'not global'