Greater social networking integration
The Messenger team have focused on expanding their userbase through the social networking market:
This begins with bringing together the most complete picture of what your friends are doing across your social networks and other sharing sites, and then helping you see at a glance what your favorite people are doing, wherever they’re doing it. This includes comprehensive integration with Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and a wide range of other sharing sites.
New screenshots have revealed much of the focus is going to be on Facebook Chat integration, with dedicated conversation windows been provided:
As part of our deeper integration with Facebook, later this year Messenger will support Facebook Chat, so you’ll be able to IM all your Facebook friends from within Messenger.
Messenger on your iPhone
Perhaps the most exciting news to emerge this weekend is the unveiling of Windows Live Messenger for the iPhone. According to Neowin’s coverage:
The Messenger client will offer all the standard features, instant messaging, photo sharing, accept and send friend invitations, emoticons and much more. Users can also browse their connected social networks, allowing users to comment, like, browse and share information with their friends and family.
Messenger Connect
Microsoft have unveiled new ways for web developers to integrate Windows Live Messenger users into their website, allowing them to use their Windows Live profile, Messenger contacts and personal credentials securely from one account. It works in a similar fashion similar to Facebook Connect. You can read more over at Windows Live Blog.
Hi-def video chat, real-time photo sharing and video voicemail
Microsoft have made live their Windows Live preview website, which gives an overview of what users can expect from Wave 4 Windows Live products. It signals a push to get users talking about Wave 4, perhaps in the mists of releasing a public beta of Windows Live Essentials in the near future.
Video chat quality has been improved, the photo-sharing feature is more interactive and in real-time, while users can how send short video-messages to offline contacts that will play when they next sign in. The upcoming version appears to be significantly enhancing current Messenger features.
The build-up to Windows Live Wave 4 is truly underway. Expect greater coverage to come. For now check out the video below for an overview:
So what's up with Messenger? One of the most frequent questions we get here on Mojo and in forums is that you – our customers and community- want an update on timing for A/V support in the Messenger personal service, especially since we shared our plan to deliver a beta of personal A/V in 2009. Here's the update: progress has been slower than expected due to the challenge of connecting to the most current A/V code running on the Windows Live servers. We will not have a beta available in 2009, but we are close: we are in "dogfood", and we plan to have the beta available to you by next March. We know how anxious you are to use this new version, but I want to ensure we are delivering a top quality experience before we ship, and we will have that in March.
It appears technical difficulties have delayed the overdue feature of audio and video conversations, something we witnessed in working condition last march when an internal build leaked. Nevertheless a beta is expected this March and as a Mac user myself it cannot come soon enough.
Source: Mac Mojo: 2009 in review
Simply open a chat, click the webcam button and you are ready to go! It doesn’t matter if your friends are on eBuddy, MSN, Yahoo! or Facebook; you will always be able to start a webcam session with them. All you need is a webcam!
The feature works well and is incredibly easy to use with the same functionality as you would expect from your normal IM client. To think even Microsoft Messenger for Mac doesn't even support audio or video chat is remarkable and yet a third party web messenger is doing a great job of it. As always this leaves us with speculation to what eBuddy is going to do for its next trick.
Source: eBuddy blog View details of the new webcam feature at eBuddy.com
Build 8.0.0.090205 has been circulating around the web, and offers audio and video support. This feature has been long-waited, but in the leaked build, the short-comings of the program make it highly unstable and not worth the download for these highly desired set of features. This is an early build, and a lot of work is still required.
Ever since Macs went Intel based, their potential has become wider. It appears that Microsoft may make Messenger for Mac 8 an Intel only build, a common trend among many pieces of Mac software. The transition period to Intel based Macs should mean the minimal amount of users are affected by this change. This however, is still unconfirmed by Microsoft.
Microsoft Messenger for Mac is shaping up to be a feature packed, highly-polished product. Although nothing can compete with the customization options within Windows Live Messenger for Windows, the program is intentionally designed to be simple; the cooperate mode shows it is not just meant to chat to friends, it is designed to enable productivity. When the complete version is released, expect an in-depth feature on all the individual changes.
View more information and a selection of screenshots View the Microsoft product page for Messenger for MacI'm glad to say that the upcoming release of Windows Live Messenger, currently in beta, delivers the new A/V protocol that enables us to deliver A/V support in Messenger for Mac. It is cross-platform compatible and will work with Windows Live Messenger. This is a huge milestone that will enable us to continue moving forward with Messenger for Mac development.
We are very excited to be able to bring A/V support to the personal service. Our plan is to deliver a beta version of A/V in 2009. We are also working on additional features in both the personal and corporate service of Messenger for Mac for the next version of Messenger. We'll provide more updates and details in a future blog post.
Since we can't wait and are dying to share with you the progress we've made so far, at Macworld we hope to have a live demo of the A/V work we have completed to date in the personal service of Messenger for Mac. So please come on by the MacBU booth at Macworld!
This is some great news. As a new Mac owner myself, I do find the lack of features frustrating as times, and often boot camp my way into Windows Live Messenger. When Macworld comes this year (without Apple's presence) you will hear the updates as they come in.
Source: An Update on Messenger for Mac - Mac Mojo
Faster Call Connect Time. This would be the first thing that you'll notice when you call a friend using our latest Windows Live Messenger. You will be connected and talking in less time than ever before! Not only that but we've done quite a bit to improve the sound clarity and video sharpness in addition to adding higher resolution video modes (if your hardware and connection supports it). We believe you'll be quite happy with the improvements our team has made here.
As hardware technology advanced, so did we: If you have a dual core PC, recent webcam and fast broadband connection; you will benefit more from Full Screen Video Call. Because if you have a dual core PC, and you switch to full screen during your video call; it will be upgraded to High Quality Video Call.
Great news, as the video calling system, which has been in place for years has quickly became outdated. The development team have started to take into account the new developments in processing power and availability to larger bandwidth. Seriously, the improvement from 8.5 is uncanny. Kudos to whoever is now project managing and developing Windows Live Messenger.
MessengerSays: Improved voice and video features in new version of Messenger
My criticism would be is this really targeted and would be successful?
After all on a good connection the ad is only displayed for a few seconds at most, and I wouldn't imagine that people initiating in webcam conversations are the ideal target audience for loans. Normally the adverts in this loading space are for webcam's and headsets, this suits perfectly and is pretty well targeted.
Can we expect more of these text ads to come?
The actual feature is pretty straightforward, you can now start group chats with all your buddies that are on the MSN, Yahoo or AIM networks. This means you can start a MSN groupchat, a Yahoo groupchat or an AIM groupchat, not one with mixed contacts.
We have added some other nifty features like being able to give a group chat a name, so that you can find it easily, and being able to filter contacts when you invite them.
Source: eBuddy blog Visit the eBuddy website View our web messenger page
My name is Aaron, and I'm a PM for the Messenger Voice, Video and Sounds team. We recently released an update to our earlier 8.5 Beta (which Jason pointed out earlier) that has many improvements to video call, especially on Vista. If you've occasionally run into audio jitter or noise in a Video Call, our latest version should help. We also improved echo support and a small issue with the volume sliders.
I want small improvements like this to be applied all over Windows Live Messenger. You all must have a pet hate feature that you find horrible to use (adding emoticons or sending files to a contact for example). I've also noticed the Messenger team are blogging a lot more and there appears to be some new faces.
Source: MessengerSays blog
Messenger Stuff