Main/News >> News Archives > The week of September 14 (2003) (you are here)

 Updated: Tab Editor for MSN Messenger

dwergs says ( 20 Sep 2003 ):

Daniel has updated his Tab Editor for MSN Messsenger 6.0 (not 6.1 BETA). Apart from a couple of fixes, it now automaticly chooses the account ID on Windows XP (thnx to Will). Download here.

 MSN Messenger 6.1 Release Date!

zipp says ( 20 Sep 2003 ):

Microsoft has shown the official release date of MSN Messenger 6.1 to be the 23rd of October! The widely anticipated next version of the popular 6 release promises a number of new features and games most of which can be found right here! But remember that Microsoft like to tweak their release dates so I guess we will just have to wait and see! [Reported by: Huuf and ryguy2008]

 International Talk Like a Pirate Day

dwergs says ( 19 Sep 2003 ):

Avast you swashbucklers! This 19th sunrise o' September tis International Talk Like a Pirate day! So drink up your grog, me hearties! Soon, your real name shall be among those that walked the plank to their demise in the oceans depths. Smartly, get your sproggy pirate nickname (or for the lasses, your female pirate msn name)! And here's some booty resource for how to talk like a pirate... [a graduated psychologist's analysis: "dwergs has gone berserk"]

 MSN Hotmail: The Next Generation

dwergs says ( 19 Sep 2003 ):

Here's what Hotmail might be going to look like in the future. Definitely a nicer design and I love the spam reporting, but I'd rather hop into my inbox with ALL my mails directly. Just a matter of opinion, I guess... [Source: Avenger at Neowin]

 Download Database Status

dwergs says ( 19 Sep 2003 ):

Uploading and relocating all the downloads is taking longer than I expected. Except for a handful of emoticon fonts, I think all MSN Messenger 6 downloads are available again. MSN Messenger 5 addons and bots have been [Archived] and will take a little longer to be reuploaded. Very old stuff that doesn't work with MSN 5 won't be reuploaded at all, because as of October 15th it will become completely useless. Rest in peace, Demonic Seed, Shock Mssgr v2, Arcane Light Messenger Tools and friends. You will all be missed! :'(

 Get your free Wee-Mee!

dwergs says ( 19 Sep 2003 ):

For those of you who haven't located the Print Screen button on their keyboards yet, here are some instructions to get your cute 'n customized Wee-Mee emailed to you free of charge: 1) Go to Saw-You.com and create a new account. 2) When done, build your Wee-Mee. 3) Once satisfied, click on 'Home' and scroll down to WeeMee Xtras. 4) In there, go to Hotmail and fill out the form. Click create and your Wee-Mee will be email-attached straight to you. [Found at: kapsoft.co.uk]

 Upgrade: Easy Message 2.3 with MSN Messenger protocol 9 support

dwergs says ( 19 Sep 2003 ):

Easy Message 2.3 build 638 by Ryan Dewsbury has been recently released to the masses. It's an ultra-lite instant messaging client with support for MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo! and AIM. And yes, this latest version will survive both MSN & Yahoo's planned lockouts of third party clients. Download Easy Message 2.3.638 from download.com (although it's still labeled as 2.2).

 Coming Soon: Messenger Freedom

dwergs says ( 18 Sep 2003 ):

Coming soon to the MSN Messenger scene is a whole new revolutionary add-on called Messenger Freedom. wtbw, the man behind this project, has showed me a still-to-be-kept-secret feature list and I can tell you one thing: this thing is ready to rock! A thread on the Plus! forum already speaks of one feature, so I guess I'm allowed to share that one: Messenger Freedom will allow finally (multiple) resumable file transfers! Just like Plus! it will blend into your MSN Messenger completely and add a whole bunch of very customizable options. "It is aimed at being mature software - stable and solid, with no glitches or weird behavior [...] It will be as clean as possible and easy to use - however, it is aimed at a slightly more "technical" audience than Plus!" Here's a preview of the Messenger Freedom logo designed by ecko_complex, who will do all the program's graphics. Beta-testing is expected to start by the end of September and testers will be close friends only chosen by wtbw. Applying is not possible! We're hoping for a public beta-release in October. Keep your eyes on this space for more!

 Announcement: The Winners of the Mood Display Picture Competition

dwergs says ( 18 Sep 2003 ):

It was very hard to select only two winners out of all who participated in our mood display picture compo last Summer. Nearly 300 Mood Display Pictures were submitted. Thanks so much to ALL of you, this is an awesome result! Too bad I only had two 25 US dollar vouchers for 5inch.com to give away, so I had to depend heavily on quality, quantity, the presence of the mess.be URL on the image, originality, etc... *drum roll* The winners are: nebuloso & kingady Like I said, I've seen some superb contributions by many people and I'm sure they'll have huge shot at winning in the future graphics competitions that I'm planning! Also, the free display pictures and emoticons gallery has been accessible more than ever for the last couple of days, thanks to Phil! I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 Cerulean: "I can't hear you Microsoft !"

timothy says ( 18 Sep 2003 ):

As a reaction on the news that both Microsoft and Yahoo are going to charge third party clients for using their servers; Cerulean studios have released a patch in silence for trillian 0.74 that updates the protocol that will work on the new server MSN and Yahoo servers. No more official information about this patch can be found on the Cerulean site. But are the people at Cerulean waiting in the hope Microsoft won't see them and thinking "It’ll pass along..."? [Source: Cerulean Studios]

 Mass-mailing worm on the loose promising to stop Messenger Popups

dwergs says ( 18 Sep 2003 ):

W32.Patoo@mm is a mass-mailing worm that attempts to use Microsoft Outlook to email itself to all the contacts in the Address Book. The email has the following characteristics: Subject: hey.. Attachment: Stop Messenger Popups While the attachment name is displayed as Stop Messenger Popups, the attachment is actually the original filename of the worm (most likely Msngrblock.exe). This is accomplished by modifying the label of the attachment to deceive the recipient. Removal instructions can be found here. By the way, if you really want to remove the Messenger Service Popups this worm only promises to disable, check out this site. These popups are often mistakenly linked to MSN Messenger. [Source: Symantec]

 Behold, a new custom MSN Messenger game called... Tetris!

dwergs says ( 18 Sep 2003 ):

The Seabattle game is now called Battleships and the user interface has been redesigned. But the really big news today is the announcement of a complete new custom game for your MSN Messenger: here's TETRIS (screenshot). The simple, highly addictive, real-time puzzle game is now available thanks to gameguru Koen and also neil for investing a lot of time into creating the graphics. Those who have installed the games patch already will find the new game freshly added to the launch menu. If that's not the case, chase to games.mess.be and follow the installation instructions to add this and 5 other superb games to the menu. Happy gaming! As this is the first realtime game some problems are expected. Please help the developer and share your experiences here.

 Yahoo IM Interoperability Survey

zipp says ( 17 Sep 2003 ):

Yahoo Inc. has conducted an online survey which states that their Yahoo! IM Client will may be in future incorperate the ability to communicate with rival clients including: MSN Messenger and AOL Messenger. This all seems a bit unrealistic as Yahoo Inc. will have to pay Microsoft and possibly AOL a substantial amount in the light of Microsoft's new third-party policy. Yahoo Inc. says that the interoperability service will only be available to premium subscribers, which includes a "small fee" possibly to cover Microsoft's third-party policy expenses. So it seems that true interoperability will not happen in the near future, but will provide multi-protocol compatibility (similar to Trillian) in the mean time! [Source: BigBlueBall.com]

 The Return of the Blaster Worm?

zipp says ( 17 Sep 2003 ):

Software researchers are warning of a possible Blaster 2 Worm which exploits recent security flaws in Windows NT based operating systems (NT/2000/XP). This could mean hell for most messers! We advise you to keep up to date with UPDATES and to use a good Firewall and Up-to-Date Antivirus programs to combat these malicious worms. You can read more about the Blaster 2 Worm here. [Source: Seattlepi.com] [Reported by: wabz]

 Most downloads temporarily unavailable

dwergs says ( 17 Sep 2003 ):

Due to a payment error I was unaware of, the download server got shut down. Most of the downloads will be unavailable for today while I'm re-uploading. Please note that funky things could happen when browsing the download area, but I'm expecting to get everything sorted by tomorrow.

 End of free Hotmail for MSN Mobile customers

Johnny_Mac says ( 17 Sep 2003 ):

An e-mail sent out to MSN Mobile subscribers today, tells them they have until Wednesday December 3 to subscribe to a $19.99 a year service to access MSN Hotmail on their wireless devices. Otherwise this free service will expire. The Hotmail service has been added into a MSN Mobile services package where users who subscribe to it will receive: MSN Messenger, MSN Calendar, MSN Mobile Web, MSN Hotmail and MSN Alerts. Note: $19.99 fee will increase for anyone subscribing after November 25th to $24.99. More info: MSN Mobile Source: Neowin BPN

 Small hint for MSN developers

Wolkje says ( 17 Sep 2003 ):

wtbw from MsgPlus worked out all there is to know about the weird numeric folders in your MSN (local settings) folder. All the developers know they have something to do with accounts, but what exactly is it? Read as wtbw explains how to create a number from an account mail address! So developers, hurry to his thread and find out, how to make use of his findings!

 Mess with the standard MS Sans Serif font

dwergs says ( 17 Sep 2003 ):

Sherv from Sherv.net showed me how using a special character (pick one out of this textfile) in front of your nickname turns the font it's presented in (MS Sans Serif) into something Courier-like in the toast as well as the conversation window (see screenshot). Just a little funky thing to try...

 Yahoo IM may lock out third-party clients

dwergs says ( 17 Sep 2003 ):

Yahoo Inc. seems to have taken a hint from Microsoft Corp. and is planning changes to its instant messaging service that could lock out users of third-party IM clients. The company last week started notifying users of older versions of its Yahoo Messenger client that they have to upgrade before Sept. 24 or they will no longer be able to log on, Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said Tuesday. "The upgrade likely will affect third-party clients," Osako said. "We are implementing even more aggressive measures to protect users from potential spammers. If this upgrade affects the way in which other services interact with Yahoo Messenger, it is merely a byproduct of our efforts to protect our users from potential spammers," she said. Microsoft last month said it is updating its MSN Messenger service in October. That update also is expected to lock out third-party IM clients. Microsoft cited a security issue, but also said it simply does not want third-party clients using its network without some form of compensation. [Source: InfoWorld.com]

 Added: Status Changed Notifier

dwergs says ( 17 Sep 2003 ):

At last another MSN Messenger 6 (and WM 4.7 compatible) add-on that looks good, feels good too (uh-huh that’s right): Status Changed Notifier 1.0.40 by Xerxis. It notifies you through an MSN-like toast when contacts changes their status (you can select which events and for which contacts). Not that we haven't seen this before, but it's done very thoroughly. You can also make it send specific auto-messages to a contact when he/she comes online, or execute a program when that happens. A final option shows you which contacts are idle and since when. Sounds like a useful tool to me! Download it from the MSN Messenger addons section.

 MTV VMA highlight display pictures

dwergs says ( 16 Sep 2003 ):

Madonna kisses Christina. Madonna kisses Britney. Justin is OWNED. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Back to business... [Thanks to onemanarmy and Hellraiseruk for uploading those display pictures]

 More changes to the internal MSN Messenger site

dwergs says ( 16 Sep 2003 ):

Keeping you updated on upcoming changes of the official MSN Messenger homepage: Huuf noticed QuickGreets & Hexic being listed in the internal launch site menu. And MSN has added an introducion guide for IM n00bs.

 DestructiveChild address change

dwergs says ( 15 Sep 2003 ):

British Nimrod, creator of DestructiveChild, assumes his bot has been banned by MSN. As you can find on its homepage, the bot is now available at bot & destructivechild.com (use @ instead of &). [Reported by: Daniel]

 Mobile MSN Messenger catching on in Korea

dwergs says ( 15 Sep 2003 ):

MSN Messenger is quickly expanding its presence from desktops to mobile devices in Korea, with more than 2,000 people a day downloading the chatting program directly to their cell phones and PDAs. According to KTF, operator of the mobile messaging service, downloads of the program soared to 60,000 since the company launched the business mid-July. "It is very encouraging for the company that the service is spreading fast even though we haven't begun serious marketing and sales promotions," a company official said. "We are planning for full publicity campaigns next month, expecting to increase subscriptions to 500,000 by the end of this year." Kiss your SMS goodbye, the future is IM! [Source: Korea Herald]

 Live Meeting, a part of Office but not quite

dwergs says ( 15 Sep 2003 ):

Microsoft's acquisition of PlaceWare Inc. bore fruit Monday with the launch of Office Live Meeting, an online conferencing service. Integration with the new Office 2003 products is minimal. Users can download add-ons for Outlook and MSN Messenger enabling them to start a Web conference from the Microsoft e-mail and instant-messaging clients. Subscriptions will have to be bought and the main software remains on Microsoft servers. An add-on for Windows Messenger should be available in the next six months, said Jennifer Callison, director of Live Meeting product management at Microsoft. [Source: ComputerWorld] [Further reading: News.com | Live Meeting Preview | Free 30-day Trial]

 A different view on the Microsoft licensing

Wolkje says ( 15 Sep 2003 ):

We all know that by October the 15th, all third-party companies using the MSN network, will be cut-off using a new and more secure protocol. And a lot of people really do not like this "greedy" Microsoft act. But is it really that greedy? Patchou from msgplus.net thinks it's only fair, and after I read his article, I too feel otherwise. The main concern is; Microsoft does not make any profit outof MSN Messenger, so why let other companies create bandwidth (and costs) for Microsoft? If you're an interested messer, read the whole article here.

 Wee Mee, Wee You: Build your own little fella

dwergs says ( 15 Sep 2003 ):

Thanks go to Dan for pointing us to Wee-Mee, a display picture avatar builder by MSN.co.uk. You can dress the character, change its hair, eyecolor, etc. Hell, you can even add a cigarette, beer belly and a cannabis plant. When you're done you have to grab your mobile phone and text a code to a certain number in order to receive your personalized little Wee-dude. This service is currently only available to people from the United Kingdom. If you live somewhere else, you can just play around with it a bit, or use another avatar builder like this available for free at MyEmo.com.

 The trouble with the DP & CE gallery

dwergs says ( 14 Sep 2003 ):

I get a lot of complaints about the accessibility problem of the custom emoticons and display pictures and I'm really really sorry for the nuisance that it's causing. I'm probably going to have to replace the software behind the gallery completely, because it's not fit for serving all of you appropriately and your satisfaction is my main concern. Stay tuned!

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