In the past we've mentioned Messenger Plus a few times. It's an add-on for Windows Live Messenger (WLM) that adds all kinds of features and extras. There are millions of people who use WLM yet don't know that Messenger Plus exists, so we thought we'd take some time today to explain the benefits of the add-on and all that it offers.
This morning, one of the contacts on my Windows Live Messenger list appeared to be on-line and sent me a link that looked like this: [myusername].historyshotz.com.
Remember ICQ, some of you may still use it today but back in the mid 90's it was one of the first instant messengers to really take-off and become popular. Shortly after, AOL's Instant Messenger became a hit followed by others developed by Microsoft and Yahoo. Eventually we saw clients introduced that supported multiple protocols like Pidgin, Trillian, Digsby, and Adium.
In what turned out to be a simple coincidence, over the weekend, Windows Live Messenger users reported that they were unable to send YouTube links to their contacts. The screenshot below from I Started Something shows that when a user tried to send any type of link with "youtube.com" in it, the message failed to be delivered.
The last time we mentioned Microsoft's I'm initiative was just a couple of weeks ago when they announced that they had already raised $1.3 million dollars in a year. While impressive, reader "Iain Purdie" noted that this initiative is only available in the United States.
In March 2007 Microsoft decided to give users even more of an incentive for using their Windows Live Messenger service. They started an initiative called I'm where part of the ad revenue would be shared from one of ten charities that you could pick from.
Many people waited in anticipation for the new version of Messenger Plus 4.5 which has been six months in the making.
Yesterday Microsoft invited only 5,000 testers to try out Windows Live Messenger version 9 in beta which will eventually replace Windows Live Messenger 8.5. We were actually invited to be one of those testers and as luck would have it, you'll be able to try it too. The download has been leaked, and Softpedia has it available.
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In about 11 hours Microsoft will be launching their Windows Live Wave 2, which is a collection of applications offered at no cost. You can download the new installer now even though the "wave" of updated programs won't be released until later today.
