Webware

FoxyTunes unlocks access to a wide range of music players.

(Credit: Yahoo)

FoxyTunes, the popular music-player plug-in for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Thunderbird, and so on, is now a plug-in supporting Yahoo Messenger for Windows, versions 8.1, 9, and 10 beta.

Maybe we should to call it "FoxyHoo."

With the plug-in installed, you can control your desktop music player in addition to sharing what you're playing in the status bar. Specifically, you can launch about two dozen supported music players from the Yahoo Messenger interface, manipulating everything from volume to skipping a song. Here's a sampler of integrated players: iTunes, RealPlayer, VLC, Windows Media Player, WinAmp, and MediaMonkey.

In addition to commanding your music player, the FoxyTunes plug-in for Yahoo Messenger can also open lone audio files. To check out song lyrics while a tune plays, there's a FoxyTunes Planet button you can click. The Web site features music news, lyrics, and videos.

We would have thought that FoxyTunes' integration with Yahoo Messenger for Windows would have been the first thing Yahoo did when it snapped up FoxyTunes in 2008 for its music division. After all, the ability to share musical selections via Yahoo Messenger ha been available for the Mac client since 2006, a Yahoo representative told CNET. However, one look at the Web site, which promotes a Download.com review from 2006, tells us that maintaining the brand isn't very high on Yahoo's list.

That said, FoxyTunes has been far from idle. Back in August, FoxyTunes integrated support for posting music choices to Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo Messenger's status bar, and Last.fm (Last.fm is a part of CBS Interactive, which also publishes CNET.)

The easiest way to get started downloading the plug-in is to click "Add Plug-ins" from your Yahoo Messenger interface and select FoxyTunes.

Corrected on 10/30/09 at 3:10 pm: A Yahoo representative has clarified that Yahoo Messenger has been able to post FoxyTunes selections on Mac since 2006.

BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, now with mug shots.

(Credit: BlackBerry (RIM))

The mobile carriers have in-network calling, and BlackBerry users have BlackBerry Messenger, a BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry instant messenger that works more like e-mail than SMS to send real-time messages through RIM's servers. On Wednesday, RIM released BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, a version that pads the messenger with "avatars" (but they're more like your standard social networking mug shots), group chat, and photo sharing.

In addition to sending photos to contacts, BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 now opens the gates for transferring large files--up to 6MB in size. That's the equivalent of several photos, or one or two songs--maybe a very short video.

RIM also adds a new way to find friends. Users have been able to connect with a PIN, e-mail address, or name. Now they can lock onto each other with bar codes and cameras. One BlackBerry produces a bar code and the other snaps a photo that Messenger 5.0 can read and translate. It may not be as flashy as the Bump app for iPhone, but we'll take it.

Yahoo Messenger 10 beta--screenshots

It seems as if it were just yesterday that Yahoo's Messenger team rolled out version 9 (it was a little less than a year ago, in fact.) The upgrade was so dramatic and overdue that it's a little surprising Yahoo has already tweaked its chat client, now parading Yahoo Messenger 10 beta to testers and curious chatters. We're glad they did. Even though the changes may not please everyone uniformly, nor should they incite ire. The features build off Yahoo Messenger 9, emphasize social networking, and improved video calling.

You'll be able to learn more about the social networking aspects from the photo gallery. This blog will focus on the video features.

VoIP and PC-to-landline calls aren't new to Yahoo Messenger, but the icon that calls out video chats is. Most of the major IM clients support voice-over-Internet calls with Webcams. It is Yahoo's attention to video quality makes this build a closer competitor to Skype for Windows, which is a VoIP client first, enriched by chatting, file sharing, emoticons, and games. Yahoo Messenger (and Windows Live Messenger, and so on, for that matter,) are chat apps at the core that have layered on other P2P features.

Skype is still ahead in terms of total features, like screen sharing, its most recent contribution to the VoIP community. However, the Web chatting experience was good enough on Yahoo Messenger 10 beta in our tests that we might prefer to use it to start a casual video call if the app is already running, rather than fire up Skype. Admittedly, our tests were limited by the callers' proximity to each other, fast data connections, and strong computing configurations. We'll need to keep up the calling with a cross-section of international users to get a more accurate litmus. Since the improved video calling only works with other Yahoo Messenger 10 beta users, we may have to wait for further adoption to test these theories.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Proximity notwithstanding, there were some performance issues. The call quality was clear and the videos were as crisp as our hardware allowed. Chatting and file sharing, however, slowed to a crawl as the call progressed. This seems to be the reverse of Skype, in which chatting has, in the past, often transmitted faster than the voice packets. Again, being in the same city, let alone the same country, could at least partly explain the reversal.

In addition to both parties needing Yahoo Messenger 10 beta on their Windows computers, there are some basic system requirements. You'll need Windows XP or better with a 1GHz CPU processor and 512MB of RAM. Your broadband internet will require a minimum of 300Kbps download speed and a minimum of 128Kbps upload (test both here). Then there's the video card. You'll need at least 96MB memory. A Webcam is mandatory to output video calls, but not to see a buddy's video. However, you will receive an alert if you don't have a Webcam. The final ingredient we'll mention is that the latest version of Microsoft DirectX must be installed. Yahoo provides a full list of specs and tips in its help topics. Yahoo's Messenger team provides some common FAQs and video tips here

Briefly, some of the other video features include toggling the sound on and off and shifting the position of the Webcam windows on your screen. These convenience tools worked well and gave the application some depth; we also liked being able to transfer files in full screen mode, even though photo transfers were slow.

This bug reminders us that beta software is often a work-in-progress.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

One more complaint: The new Yahoo Messenger 10 beta doesn't appear to play nicely with all third-party IM clients. We noticed when chatting with a buddy who uses Digsby, that each line we type was replicated in the chat window. Odd, yes, and also irritating over time. But not all users chatting between Yahoo Messenger 10 beta and a different chat client will encounter problems, but if you do, let us know.

Want to see more screenshots and feature details? We have plenty in the Yahoo Messenger 10 beta gallery. .

Yahoo has begun bringing its BrowserPlus technology to a broader audience, making installation of the browser-boosting plug-in a default part of installing the beta of the new Yahoo Messenger 10 that emerged this week.

BrowserPlus gives Web sites some better abilities taken for granted in applications that run natively on a computer, and because it's a framework, new abilities can be added later. Among the current features are the ability to drag files from the desktop to the browser, to read accelerometer data to judge a computer's orientation, to edit images, and to upload many files at once.

BrowserPlus is installed by default during the installation of the Yahoo Messenger 10 beta. Those who don't want it can deselect it through the custom installation path.

Yahoo announced BrowserPlus in May 2008, then upgraded it and made it open-source software in November.

BrowserPlus is one of many extras that can be disabled in the custom section of the Yahoo Messenger 10 beta installation.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Adobe Systems' Flash Player plug-in is widely installed, but plug-ins in general are hard to propagate enough that Web site programmers can safely assume they can be used. One way to tackle the issue is to piggyback on the distribution of other, popular software--a technique long employed to encourage adoption of browser toolbars.

Many companies are working hard on the "Open Web," in which advanced abilities are built directly into Web standards such as HTML 5. However, plug-ins such as Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, BrowserPlus, and Google's Gears can advance the state of the art faster.

Update 4:55 p.m. PDT: Yahoo said it does in fact plan to include BrowserPlus in the final version of Yahoo Messenger. Also, it shared this list of the browsers and operating systems the plug-in supports:

• Windows XP: supports Firefox 2 or newer, Safari, IE6 or newer, and Google Chrome

• Windows Vista: supports Firefox 3 or newer, Safari, IE6 or newer, and Google Chrome

• Windows 7: Same as Windows Vista, in experimental status

• Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5: Recent versions of Safari and Firefox 3 or newer

• Mac OS X 10.6: Firefox 3 or better (Safari support in the works)

Updated 1:58 p.m. PDT to correct the initial release date of BrowserPlus.

Has Yahoo finally gotten to the point where it's exchanging peanut butter for WD-40?

Yahoo chief marketing officer Elisa Steele can focus the company on the future now that long-awaited updates to core products are finally ready.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)

Three years ago, Yahoo executive Brad Garlinghouse wrote the famous "Peanut Butter Manifesto," designed as a wake-up call to a sluggish Yahoo that didn't really seem to know what to do with itself. With the peanut butter analogy, Garlinghouse was referring Yahoo's tendency to spread itself thin across too many projects, but he may as well also have been referring to how projects could be become mired in Yahoo's famous bureaucracy.

Fast forward to 2009, with Yahoo finally having chosen a course for its search business and turning its attention to its core properties, and all of the sudden Yahoo is making the ideas and concepts it has discussed for years come to life. It has taken quite some time but it's becoming clear that Yahoo is putting a higher priority on getting things done.

The MBAs call it "execution," a term trotted out by Chief Marketing Officer Elisa Steele during Monday's event to describe the launch of Yahoo's new home page last month. Some might snicker at the notion that Yahoo is now an execution company: Yahoo first unveiled an "open" plan to redesign the page in October 2007. And the enhancements described Monday were the central part of former CEO Jerry Yang's January 2008 speech at CES.

And indeed, several of the features demonstrated Monday are either in beta or in bucket testing. In the consumer electronics world, that's called a "paper launch," although standards are different on the Web.

But now that Yahoo is placing a long-term bet on the attractiveness of its services and content, making sure the basics are new enough to attract the digerati but simple enough for the masses is no small undertaking. Delivering on what has long been promised is the first step.

New leadership seems to have helped. The half-dozen vice presidents in attendance at Monday's meeting kept joking about how new some of them were to the company, and the overall impact was not lost that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has really shaken up the ranks of Yahoo's engineering and marketing culture.

Now the question for Yahoo is whether the changes it is making to the core properties that drive a huge proportion of its traffic are enough to get the ship moving in the right direction. There's a fine line that Yahoo has to walk between keeping up with advances in communication, social networking, and Web technology and the risk of alienating the millions of users who like things just the way they are, people who Yahoo is increasingly reliant upon for advertising revenue.

Either way, Yahoo has to make sure those people stay within its network, the catalyst for several of the features showcased Monday. Those searching for YouTube videos can watch them right in the search results page. Social butterflies can deliver the latest breathless update to their friends right from their inboxes or IM windows, perhaps one day posting directly to networks like Facebook and Twitter without going through a Web application.

The slick redesigns that Yahoo trotted out Monday are long overdue. While the delay may prompt some to wonder exactly what has been going on in Sunnyvale over the past two years, the fire that Bartz lit under Yahoo earlier this year is starting to produce results.

If the next revision to Yahoo's home page or Mail client arrives in 2011, however, all the changes this year will have been for naught.

Yahoo Messenger, along with several other core products, are looking more and more social every day.

(Credit: Yahoo)

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Yahoo increased the social graces of its core products Monday, with a nod to its new home page and a declaration that it's not done with search just yet.

Popular Yahoo products such as Mail and Messenger will soon grow more social, allowing users to update their status, share photos with friends, and initiate video calls. In addition, Yahoo Search is about to get a new results page that can connect searchers directly to the Web content they seek without leaving the results page.

"Our user base grows when things are simpler and more delightful," said Elisa Steele, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Yahoo. The idea is twofold: to attract more people who are not already familiar with Yahoo's content and to entice those who already use products like Yahoo Mail to spend more time on the site. Either way, that's more eyeballs for advertisers.

To that effect, Yahoo hopes to tap into the popularity of social networking by redesigning Yahoo Mail--the leading e-mail service in the world--to feature status updates, links to social content like photo albums, and additional applications such as Evite. The new home page allows Yahoo members to update their status and broadcast that within the Yahoo network, and that box will also be added to the Mail and Messenger experiences.

At the moment, however, those obsessed with social networking are likely already hooked up with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. The status updates that are available through the top of the Yahoo home page and Mail page will only broadcast to those who you've connected with via Yahoo profiles, but at some point Yahoo wants to link that status update box to outside services to allow you to update your status once and broadcast it to multiple networks, said Tapan Bhat, senior vice president of integrated consumer experiences.

Still, there's still an awful lot of people who haven't taken the Twitter plunge, said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of applications products. Yahoo wants to have it both ways: to provide a social outlet for Yahoo users who haven't signed up for things like Twitter and to give those Yahoo users already hooked into other social networks a chance to run everything through Yahoo.

And although Yahoo plans to offload its search business to Microsoft at some point over the next several years, it demonstrated a new search results page that can display search results from specific sites that are related to the query. For example, searches for queries such as "how to make sushi" return Wikipedia and eHow links on the left hand side of the page, and searches for people link to results gathered from Facebook or Twitter.

"Searching for people has been Google's domain. We're going to take that away from them," said Larry Cornett, vice president of search products and design.

Many people forget that although Microsoft is set to take over on the back end, Yahoo will retain control of how Bing-powered results are presented on Yahoo pages, said Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president of Yahoo Labs and search strategy. That means the company will continue to tweak the front-end experience, and from that standpoint could really be considered a competitor of Bing.

"We are not a version of Bing...What we do with (search results), how we paint it, that's entirely up to us," Raghavan said.

Corrected at 2:45 p.m. PDT with the correct spelling of search executive Larry Cornett's name.

Updated at 4:30 p.m. PDT following Yahoo's removal of the blog post and subsequent clarification of the situation. See below for details.

Yahoo appears to be a little miffed that Apple's App Store reviewers are still sitting on an update to the Yahoo Messenger for iPhone application.

Yahoo's ready for the new Yahoo Messenger for iPhone update to be released.

(Credit: Yahoo)

In a post titled "And so we wait...on Apple," Yahoo's Sarah Bacon calls out Apple for "the somewhat unpredictable process for getting apps approved and released" on the App Store. Yahoo said it submitted an update for the Yahoo Messenger app (iTunes link) two weeks ago, but has nothing to show for it.

Now, as App Store approval delays or rejections go, two weeks is nothing. Yahoo could just ask Sling Media how it felt about the month-long delay in the approval process for SlingPlayer Mobile, or rival Google about the rejection of Google Voice from the App Store. But Yahoo's decision to publicly call out Apple is interesting, given the possible thawing of relations between iPhone developers and Apple following Apple Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller's outreach to bloggers and developers.

"Anyone want to bet that Facebook's app, which was submitted after ours, gets approved first?" Bacon asked. No action, Yahoo, especially now.

UPDATED 4:30 p.m. PDT - Yahoo has since removed the post in question, but according to Lucas Mast of Yahoo Mobile public relations, plans to update it later today. Apparently Bacon, who works for the Yahoo Messenger group, did not have all the facts concerning Yahoo's submission of the Messenger update to Apple, which was handled by the mobile team.

Yahoo did in fact submit the update to Apple two weeks ago, but pulled that update a week ago "to make some additional corrections/updates," Mast said. "This process resets the approval process time, which we were aware of."

Yahoo expects Apple to approve the update shortly, but it has only been less than a week since the clock was restarted on the update. "We have been pleased with the approval process and Apple's responsiveness and look forward to continued submissions as we mobilize Yahoo," Mast said.

Whoops.

A new skin preps you for Digsby on Windows 7.

(Credit: Digsby)

On Wednesday, Digsby released a new version of the Digsby all-in-one instant messenger to all users.

Digsby 61 is a medium-size update that concentrates on bulking up Digsby's interaction with social networks. The first addition is a new dialog box that hooks into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace so that any status message set in Digsby can also broadcast to the others. Called the Global Status dialog, it folds in a URL shortener that makes it easier to share links in your status update. The link-shortener hasn't crossed over into the instant message windows; it's current realm is the status message only.

When you send a link, Digsby utilizes the same virtual toolbar metaphor that got some Digg users up in arms. But here's a tip: to send a straightforward link that ducks the Digsby "toolbar," add a dash (-) to the end of the URL.

You're also able to share pictures in the Global Status box thanks to integration with pic.im.

A significantly expanded MySpace newsfeed is a second change. Some back-end alterations have opened up the info box. Instead of just being able to view status updates, Digsby can now pull in your MySpace activity stream, letting you see the full newsfeed and flip through photos.

In addition to socializing, Digsby's latest uses OneRiot's real-time Web search engine to add Web search. Hit Control and F while in the buddy list view to begin.

In a nod to Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 7 operating system, Digsby has also added a new user-created skin option for the buddy list. You can select the light blue Windows 7 skin from the skins drop-down menu, and swap among it, the metallic look, and a tinted theme (our personal favorite).

You can download the new build; alternatively, existing users can wait for Digsby to push out the update.

Updated at 3:30 PM with a note on Digsby's methodology.

Ctrl+F gives you the search bar to summon Web search and contacts.

(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)

Rising-star all-in-one IM app Digsby received an update to its beta on Wednesday, officially announcing feature additions that Digsby tested in an earlier alpha release we had reported on in April.

A boost to performance power reduces Digsby's CPU usage by 50 percent, the company said. That makes it a whopping 20 percent more efficient than Digsby claimed it was in April's alpha test. (Read note below.) Avid users can thank some back-end work with a coding language update and a move to a new compiler for this reduction in resources.

On the usability side, Digsby is sporting the new and enhanced features we saw in the alpha test. The best is a hidden search bar that pops up when you press Ctrl + F. In addition to summoning buddies when you type their names, it can also conduct Web searches on Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, iTunes, and YouTube. This Web search aspect differentiates Digsby's search from those employed in other IM clients.

Digsby has added an option that will automatically keep new IM windows from popping up by default, instead letting the unread messages blink in the tray. In the message window, the company has added four additional emoticon packs, which you can enable one at a time via the Preferences menu (click "Conversations" and "Enable emoticons" next.)

The new beta build also lets you update your MySpace status. This rounds out its update services to top social networks--Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have long been supported. Digsby also improves the stability for file transfers for Windows Live Messenger (MSN), AIM, and ICQ, and can now give you an 'invisible' presence in Google Talk.

For those who have kept Digsby at arm's length until now, the faster, less demanding version of this app sweetens the deal. With instant messaging, social networking, e-mail access, and skin customizations under its belt, it's a must-try chat app for IM aficionados.

Note: Digsby shared a real-world methodology they used to arrive at the 50 percent CPU drop between betas. In a development environment, they installed the two versions of the Digsby IM client in two different locations, logging into the same account on both instances. Then they switched on the individual protocols that let you log in from more than one location--AIM, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, e-mail protocols, and Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Both ran for 24 hours to compare the CPU strain as buddies signed on and off, and as e-mails and notices poured in.

Since Digsby only allows one version of itself to launch at a time, this was not something we tested.