Got a problem with Messenger? Visit our community forums and our members will help you with your problem.Sit the i-Buddy on your desk and watch emoticons in motion
on Wed 09 Jan 2008 (18:50 GMT)
on Wed 09 Jan 2008 (18:50 GMT)
The i-Buddy is a fairly new invention from Hong Kong which is designed to interact with events on Windows Live Messenger. It looks similar to the Messenger buddy characters and even has wings like the old MSN Messenger logo.
Simply plug it into your computer via USB and place it on your desk or the top of your monitor then watch as it reacts to different emoticons that are sent to you or when that special contact of your choice signs in.
When the contact you specify signs in a little heart will glow on the i-Buddy's chest. It also reacts by shaking, twisting, glowing and flapping with 8 different emotions when you are sent different emoticons or receive a nudge.
It's currently available in the UK and Brazil, and its manufacturers, Union Creations, are looking to launch in the US soon.
>> View the i-Buddy in action
>> Source: Gearlog
>> Official product information (UK site, Brazil site, i-Buddy community)
Simply plug it into your computer via USB and place it on your desk or the top of your monitor then watch as it reacts to different emoticons that are sent to you or when that special contact of your choice signs in.
When the contact you specify signs in a little heart will glow on the i-Buddy's chest. It also reacts by shaking, twisting, glowing and flapping with 8 different emotions when you are sent different emoticons or receive a nudge.
It's currently available in the UK and Brazil, and its manufacturers, Union Creations, are looking to launch in the US soon.
>> View the i-Buddy in action
>> Source: Gearlog
>> Official product information (UK site, Brazil site, i-Buddy community)
Messenger Plus! Live skins I just love
on Sat 05 Jan 2008 (14:29 GMT)
on Sat 05 Jan 2008 (14:29 GMT)
I have been putting this post off for a while now. My excuses are exams and the fact this post probably needed time to get a good list together. I am a bit of a Messenger skins fanatic and I have been chatting all about Messenger Plus! Live 4.50 in recent weeks, which revealed a big new feature: a Messenger skins manager.
The skins I have chosen are ones I have found to be well designed, unique and most of all ones with attention to detail i.e. completed fully, polished. Yes, this means no Vista skins!
Ev0
This Messenger skins has been around a while, and its creator was able to get his hands on an early build of Messenger Plus! Live 4.50 so he could get this skin out by release. Its clean design, with unique ideas is complimented by the various colour themes available. To date it has had nearly 200,000 downloads and is probably the best skin available for Messenger Plus! Live.
>> Download EvO
Beaver and Steve
Honestly Nile, this skin is rather ugly; its bright colours and the cartoonish look are not desirable, but it is these things that make it unique, charming if you will. More importantly it uses shapes therefore making it the first skin released to manipulate Messenger's windows. Nile has put a lot of effort into this skin and there are lots of customizable options meaning you can remove things from Messenger until you are happy. I'm actually surprised he didn't try and plug it himself ...
>> Download Beaver and Steve
SkyLines
This skin is very stylish and well made. Looking over all the little details you can see a lot of effort has been put into making this skin. This skin is compatible with Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and 9.0, so what are you waiting for? Add SkyLines to your skin library.
>> Download SkyLines
Nightfall
A dark skin is the best way to describe this. Its simple, but I like simple and I think this is just the start for its creator. The skin is customised for green, red, blue and black colour themes.
>> Download Nightfall
RoyaLive!
Similar to Nightfall this skin uses soft gradients well. It has its flaws, but overall it is a good skin.
>> Download RoyaLive!
Office07
This skin is all about basics. It shows that all you need to do is take your time and perfect the images you want to skin. The colours in Office07 compliment Messenger well, but more importantly its creator designed this website, so I'm forced to think it looks great.
>> Download Office07
Nao Messenger
This skin users colours well in my opinion. The theme of green and blue suits Messenger when used in this way. It adds fun to Messenger, but at the same time good enough to use everyday. It may not be perfect, but Nao Messenger is better than most.
>> Nao Messenger
I hope you liked my list. If you have a skin of your own and want to share it send it our way. Remember these are just a selection of the skins available, view the entire database for more. If your skin is not on the list, there is a chance I missed it, but more probable is I didn't like it.
The skins I have chosen are ones I have found to be well designed, unique and most of all ones with attention to detail i.e. completed fully, polished. Yes, this means no Vista skins!
This Messenger skins has been around a while, and its creator was able to get his hands on an early build of Messenger Plus! Live 4.50 so he could get this skin out by release. Its clean design, with unique ideas is complimented by the various colour themes available. To date it has had nearly 200,000 downloads and is probably the best skin available for Messenger Plus! Live.
>> Download EvO
Honestly Nile, this skin is rather ugly; its bright colours and the cartoonish look are not desirable, but it is these things that make it unique, charming if you will. More importantly it uses shapes therefore making it the first skin released to manipulate Messenger's windows. Nile has put a lot of effort into this skin and there are lots of customizable options meaning you can remove things from Messenger until you are happy. I'm actually surprised he didn't try and plug it himself ...
>> Download Beaver and Steve
This skin is very stylish and well made. Looking over all the little details you can see a lot of effort has been put into making this skin. This skin is compatible with Windows Live Messenger 8.5 and 9.0, so what are you waiting for? Add SkyLines to your skin library.
>> Download SkyLines
A dark skin is the best way to describe this. Its simple, but I like simple and I think this is just the start for its creator. The skin is customised for green, red, blue and black colour themes.
>> Download Nightfall
Similar to Nightfall this skin uses soft gradients well. It has its flaws, but overall it is a good skin.
>> Download RoyaLive!
This skin is all about basics. It shows that all you need to do is take your time and perfect the images you want to skin. The colours in Office07 compliment Messenger well, but more importantly its creator designed this website, so I'm forced to think it looks great.
>> Download Office07
This skin users colours well in my opinion. The theme of green and blue suits Messenger when used in this way. It adds fun to Messenger, but at the same time good enough to use everyday. It may not be perfect, but Nao Messenger is better than most.
>> Nao Messenger
I hope you liked my list. If you have a skin of your own and want to share it send it our way. Remember these are just a selection of the skins available, view the entire database for more. If your skin is not on the list, there is a chance I missed it, but more probable is I didn't like it.
StuffPlug 3.5 screenshots and features
on Mon 31 Dec 2007 (15:23 GMT)
on Mon 31 Dec 2007 (15:23 GMT)
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:
>> View some screenshots of the upcoming version
>> Visit the official StuffPlug website
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
StuffPlug 3.5 and 4.0 development progress
on Fri 28 Dec 2007 (00:31 GMT)
on Fri 28 Dec 2007 (00:31 GMT)
StuffPlug creator, TheBlasphemer, has just posted an insight into the development status of his popular add-on, StuffPlug being developed for Windows Live Messenger 8.5.
>> View TB's post discussing development
It's been a while since I last posted here. Now I mention it, it's been a terribly long time since I've actually shown something to the outside world!
Some people had already declared SP to be dead, but nothing is further from the truth; I've never really stopped working on it completely.
So what can you expect?
Well, I've kinda lost track on the number of bugfixes, optimizations and stuff like that, there's just millions of those ;)
We've also been working on some new features, but most of those are far from completed, and still need a lot of work before they go public. Speaking of which, there's been a "debug" menu in SP for ages now, listing all not-completed and experimental features, but it's been well hidden and locked down. With StuffPlug 3.5, that is going to change. Anyone can enable the "Experimental" feature category now, and they can try out some of the new features we're still working on. We can't promise they're stable, hell for some of em we can't even promise they work at all, but you're free to try em and give us some feedback on it when we release :)
Now, apart from the WLM 8.5 compatibility, the other big change is the user-interface. I'd grown sick and tired of the fact that all SP windows seemed completely seperated from Windows Live Messenger, and that's why I've introduced a major UI overhaul: All StuffPlug windows will now look and feel exactly like messenger windows :) I'm still working on several parts of it, but in the attachment you can see that I've got the most important windows nailed already ;)
When to expect all this? I'm trying to get it released by new years as a little present, but to be honest I'm not totally sure I'm going to make it. It'll probably be done around 7 januari or so, or 21 januari if you want a translated version ;)
- TB
P.S. I've deliberately shot the options window with the experimental tab highlighted, to tease you a bit ;) Feel free to speculate what some of the names might mean, I might throw in some extra screenshots later!
Some people had already declared SP to be dead, but nothing is further from the truth; I've never really stopped working on it completely.
So what can you expect?
Well, I've kinda lost track on the number of bugfixes, optimizations and stuff like that, there's just millions of those ;)
We've also been working on some new features, but most of those are far from completed, and still need a lot of work before they go public. Speaking of which, there's been a "debug" menu in SP for ages now, listing all not-completed and experimental features, but it's been well hidden and locked down. With StuffPlug 3.5, that is going to change. Anyone can enable the "Experimental" feature category now, and they can try out some of the new features we're still working on. We can't promise they're stable, hell for some of em we can't even promise they work at all, but you're free to try em and give us some feedback on it when we release :)
Now, apart from the WLM 8.5 compatibility, the other big change is the user-interface. I'd grown sick and tired of the fact that all SP windows seemed completely seperated from Windows Live Messenger, and that's why I've introduced a major UI overhaul: All StuffPlug windows will now look and feel exactly like messenger windows :) I'm still working on several parts of it, but in the attachment you can see that I've got the most important windows nailed already ;)
When to expect all this? I'm trying to get it released by new years as a little present, but to be honest I'm not totally sure I'm going to make it. It'll probably be done around 7 januari or so, or 21 januari if you want a translated version ;)
- TB
P.S. I've deliberately shot the options window with the experimental tab highlighted, to tease you a bit ;) Feel free to speculate what some of the names might mean, I might throw in some extra screenshots later!
>> View TB's post discussing development
