Channel 9 - Entries tagged with chat

Windows Live Messenger Now Supports Facebook Chat

Sarah Perez — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:06:00 GMT

With the recent refresh of the Windows Live Essentials beta, Windows Live Messenger has been updated to now support Facebook chat in addition to its standard IM service. This new feature further enhances the IM client software, which is already more of a social dashboard than a simple chat application.

Thanks to the (optional) “full view” feature, Messenger users can check on social networking updates, photos, and status messages from Windows Live friends, Facebook friends and MySpace friends or reads news from MSN.com. If you click “connect more services,” you can also pick dozens of others to your dashboard, including popular social sites like flickr, Twitter, Pandora, Digg, Hulu, YouTube, Photobucket, Last.fm and many more.

Now, the new version of Messenger kicks up the social networking integration to the next level by allowing you to not only see and respond to social networking activity via the dashboard, but to directly chat with Facebook friends in real-time. Even if you don’t use Messenger IM itself, the app can now function as an always-on “people app” that alerts you when your friends come online in Facebook, explains Chris Jones on the Windows Live Team blog.

To get the new Messenger, just head over to the Windows Live Essentials beta homepage here and hit the “download now” button.

Messenger for Facebook Updated

Sarah Perez — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:20:00 GMT

Earlier this year, the Windows Live Messenger team released an app for Facebook which officially integrated Live Messenger with Facebook. The Windows Live Messenger Facebook app shows your online presence on your Facebook profile and lets you IM with your friends directly on the Facebook web site itself.

Recently, this app received an update. The new V.2 version of Facebook Messenger now syncs your Live Messenger status with your Facebook status. The team also listened to user feedback and removed the HIP (Human Interface Proof) challenge which was presented before you could start a conversation.

Additionally, the new version will automatically set your display name to whatever your name is in Facebook. Before it used to prompt you to fill this in. With these updates (both the HIP and display name), there are now no more dialog boxes that appear before chatting can begin. You can now just start typing to IM your friends!

You can add Live Messenger to your Facebook by adding the app here: apps.facebook.com/windowslivemessenger.

AIM App For Windows Mobile

Sarah Perez — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:55:00 GMT

Earlier this month, AOL released their first custom-made IM application for Windows Mobile phones (versions 5 and 6). The application, AIM for Windows Mobile, lets you IM your friends, update your AIM status, manage your buddy list, insert emoticons into your updates, and more. In a variation on tabbed conversations, this AIM client shows the buddy icons for the people you're in conversation with on the left hand side of the screen instead. Those icons are overlaid with the user's status (busy, mobile, away, etc.) as well the number of unread messages from them. Another interesting, but yet to launch, feature is the ability to send out updates via SMS instead of IM - great for those with unlimited text messages but tight data plans as well as for communicating with friends who aren't signed in.

This app does not currently have an auto-updating feature, so you'll need to keep checking beta.aol.com to find out when new versions become available.