I'm going to be honest here, the current release of StuffPlug is rather bland. It lacks what made the add-on for MSN Messenger so great; unique features, exceptionally well coded. It wasn't the fault of the developers, they were busy and everyone was inspired by their ideas. Stealing emoticons and display pictures used to be StuffPlug's big features until they were mimicked by various other add-ons. What could TheBlasphemer and the other developers do to fix this?

The answer ... StuffPlug 3.5! Beta testers today received one if the largest updates to program in recent months and its going to make using StuffPlug with Messenger a must again. StuffPlug 3.5 has a new design which matches Windows Live Messenger's Vista style and changes to your specific colour scheme. The add-on is integrated well, the features are vast and it also contains some small tweaks that make Messenger more bearable.

This release is due on January 7th 2008 (in English) and on 21st January for translated versions. This is just a small step to where StuffPlug will be soon as TheBlasphemer is working on StuffPlug 4 for Windows Live Messenger 9 which will contain some new features and perfect the experimental ones. StuffPlug 3.5 is an important update, but is essentially here so Windows Live Messenger 8.5 users can use StuffPlug while adding several must have new features including:

• Editing of display name from the contact list
• Blocking of an entire group
• Adding new contacts through the wordwheel
• Sending 'action texts' to contacts, which mimics Messenger's action prompts
• Chatting to contacts whom you have blocked
• Use of chat only names within conversations
• Showing the current time of your contacts matching to their timezone
• Sending of fake invites to contacts
• Flashing of LED keyboard when computer is in full screen mode
• Disabling the file transfer limit allowing you to send more than 3 files at one time
• Boost character limit up to 5,000 in conversation messages
• Allow unlimited emoticons to be used within a message
• Window icons reflect your contacts status
• Creation of customizable timestamps
• Disable your 'user is typing a message' notification
• Opening of links in default browser
• Polygramy (multiple Messenger's running at once)
• Adding of mail icon in system tray
• Memory flusher: 'This feature periodically flushes messengers used memory and keeps its overall memory usage lower'
• Security speedup: addressing the issue that was highlighted here

View some screenshots of the upcoming version
Visit the official StuffPlug website