Congratulations to all the winners! This summer's contest is now over and it's finally more than 780 lucky users who will receive a prize this year. Free prizes with a free add-on: beautiful life isn't it? If you're in the list, expect to get your prize by the end of September (international shipping can take a long time). We’ll be glad to see you post pictures of your prize on the forum for everyone else to see.

After more than 20 million combined clicks in the first two weeks alone, 357 winners have been approved and will receive a prize package. The third week of the contest has now began with more than 320 new prize packages to find; you can thank the people who don't enter their information after finding a winning spot for such a big number of prizes. Remember that if you're a winner, your package will be shipped ground in August and will take 4 to 6 weeks to arrive to your home. We promise it will be worth the wait, all you need to do is to give us your shipping information after winning.

his year, it’s no less than 1,000 prize packages that will be offered during the contest, for a period of 4 weeks. Each package is randomly assigned a value between $20 and $1,500 and the best thing is: you chose what you want to receive! Winners will have a choice of movie, game or animated feature for which they want to receive one or more prizes, all thanks to the Evolution Store. Because this contest is so big, we needed somebody to sponsor it and this year, tons of action figures and high-end collectibles will be sent to the winners directly from the Evolution Store's warehouse. You can start browsing their online store now and decide what you'll want to receive when you find a prize in the game grid.

Each contestant is eligible to win up to 10 prize packages. To achieve this, you have two choices: don't sleep, don't eat, don't bath for a month, or, and that’s really up to you, start sending your own unique referral link to your friends and contacts. Your contacts just need to download Messenger Plus! and start playing to win a prize of their own, If they win, the good news is that you win a prize of your choice as well. So, if your Facebook, your MySpace, or your Twitter account gets a lot of visits, or if you spend your days posting on numerous forums on the web, it may be time to leverage this to your advantage. You could very well win a lot of prizes without even clicking once in the game.

Deformity Category
- 1st Place: Crystal Lab by ZOiD winner of a Cintiq 12WX.
- 2nd Place: SilverGlazz by LuckyMe winner of an Intuos3 6*8.

Originality Category
- 1st Place: Stormless Messenger by mynetx winner of a Cintiq 12WX.
- 2nd Place: Beaver and Steve by aNILEator winner of an Intuos3 6*8.

Functionality Category
- 1st Place: Wii Messenger by Ethan Li winner of a Cintiq 12WX.
- 2nd Place: Windows Live Messenger 2009 by roflmao456 winner of an Intuos3 6*8.

- Top Place: Oil Slick by Volv who wins the Cintiq 20WSX!

I am happy to say that the official skin database has now more than a hundred different skins for all of you to enjoy. More about that will be said when the winners are announced, on the 26th of September.

On a side note, I'd like to apologize for the problems you may have experienced with the Emotion Sounds feature of Messenger Plus! lately. Microsoft is not the only company who has suffered from server issues in the past few weeks (I wish I could spend time buying a new pair of shoes too). We're currently in the process of putting everything back together, you can expect service to be back to normal by tomorrow. Thank you for your patience and your understanding.

Starting today, you have 5 weeks to create the most outstanding skin imaginable. The deadline is September 14th at 23:59:59, Greenwich Mean Time. To participate, all you need to do is submit a skin to the official database (the contest is open worldwide), updates of existing skins are accepted. All the skins will be tested in the current most popular version of Messenger, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 (no need to make them work in the outdated Messenger 9 Beta from last winter).

Not 1 but 7 Wacom Tablets will be distributed to the winners of this contest. Your skin(s) will be judged and placed into three different categories: originality (something never done before), deformity (shaped windows), and functionality (improved user interface). The first prize for each category is an excellent Cintiq 12WX (check out the video on their site), a 12.1" TFT screen that acts like a second monitor for your computer and lets you draw directly on the pictures you want to edit with incredible precision. The second prize for each category is a very respectable Intuos3 6*8 with 1,024 pressure levels and professional software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements. And finally, the creator of the one best skin, all categories considered, will get rewarded for his efforts with a magnificent Cintiq 20WXS. This dream-come-true for any graphic designer features a 20.1" wide screen with a resolution of 1680*1050, has 14 customizable hard keys, 2 touch strips, a special rotating stand so that you can use the tablet like a big sheet of paper, anti-glare and friction coating to simulate the texture of paper and a wide viewing angle.

Right now we're building a Jabber/XMPP interface for Facebook Chat. In the near future, users will be able to use Jabber/XMPP-based chat applications to connect to Facebook Chat to:

• Communicate with their friends
• See which of their friends are online and view their profile pictures
• Set their statuses