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Any word on if this Jabber messenger can actually communicate with other Jabber messengers sometime in the future?
Although Google may be a power in the future — I’m not sure it was because of Google Talk that prompted the Yahoo/MSN partnership. Given AIM’s overwhelming popularity (particularly with younger people) in the US as well as ICQ’s popularity in other area’s of the world, they seem to be the clear targets.
Google Talk’s promise will hopefully be realized in the future — particularly if they can offer the upper tier features in an open source, yet interoperable fashion, like Voice. Right now, I would have to agree that in it’s current format, Google is the “stone-age of instant messaging”, as one reviewer put it.
My biggest gripe with Google Talk is that it’s open-source … in a kind of closed-source way. I can almost overlook the having to have a Gmail account requirement, even though it smells a lot like MSN, but to not even be able to add my other Jabber buddies to it seems to be just as proprietary and locked-in as any other messengers. When I can move my other Jabber contacts to Google Talk without making them get Gmail accounts to do so — then we’ll have a truly open-source model of a messenger.
Update: got a clue over at WackyB that was necessary to solve the problem. Turns out it is a bug due to a poor programming decision by Yahoo. Here is the info as I posted there to solve it for anyone else:
When Yahoo is started from a non-admin account, the program checks first if it can write to the C:Program Files directory. Failing that, it then creates it’s necessary files for that user under the Application Data folder of the user’s Documents and Settings directory. If the new Voice feature did this (like every other feature of Yahoo Messenger, there would be no problem. Unfortunately, when trying to use the Voice Message feature, the program attempts to access only the C:Program FilesYahoo area. It attempts to create the “random-name” folder for the voice section (which, apparently is not random — must be an encrypted form of the user-name since it is the same install after install) under the Cache folder. This includes the ringtones folder and the location of the Voice message. It never even attempts to go to the user’s Application Data directory failing that. This is why even giving write access after installing Yahoo never worked before. Since Yahoo was run successfully from the non-admin accounts, all the program’s profile and cache folders were placed in the user’s Application Data folder, and the program knows to go there to get them — unless you want to use the Voice Message features. In that case, Yahoo tries to write to the cacherandom-name folder under the C:Program Files — which isn’t there because the cache directory exists under Application Data for that user. It never checks if that folder exists or not — just seems hard-coded to look there and only there. Even with write access, it doesn’t create the folder if none exists. It just assumes it’s there already and fails.
The work-around is to not start Yahoo Messenger after installing from the admin account. Go into the C:Program FilesYahooMessenger folder and give write access to users before running the messenger at all. Now if the program is started from a non-admin account, it attempts to write each user’s profile data (including Cache folder) to the Program FilesYahoo area and succeeds. The folder containing the new Voice ring-tones can be created there now and the feature works for those users. Of course, all settings are now under C:Program Files and not under the Documents and Settings folder for each user.
The worst part is that this would be such an easy fix for a developer — just use the Documents and Settings folder like evey other part of Yahoo Messenger does! 🙂
For programs that don’t work well with multi-user account settings, I’ve had success with disabling simple file-sharing (a useless feature, anyway), so I can get file level control over permissions. This gets around the Microsoft hammer-approach of either all-or-nothing regarding admin accounts. If something requires admin access, I simply give the folders that are required access rather than the entire computer. Steam (Half-Life 2, CS) is an example. To be able to play on the limited accounts, I simply gave the Steam folders read/write access to my account, solving the problem without opening up my whole computer while connected. This is the approach I wanted to take with Yahoo, but obviously the folders for voice message may not be in the media folder, although I don’t know where else they are. Since all of Yahoo’s other features work well under the user accounts (since they are saved in each user’s documents and settings folder), I’m not sure why they wouldn’t put each user’s voice messages and call history there as well.
Let’s hope the links and topics dealing with removing the ads from the messengers themselves are so diligently dealt with …
Quote:quote: quote:if a person hasn’t typed a thing on Yahoo Messenger but he/she is using another program (say Outlook Express or ICQ or PowerPoint)thay would not show as idle
It should be noted that with the newest Yahoo Messenger there is a bug that affects win9x/WinME users. You will be set to idle by the Messenger unless you’re actually using it. Having it minimized while doing something else like web-browsing will still set you to idle on those OS’s.
No — he wants Trillian to support his different Yahoo profiles under his Yahoo ID. Although the official Yahoo client supports this, Trillian does not. In fact, if you have different contacts under each profile, Trillian will merge them all into one buddy list if you login with your main Yahoo ID.
Doesn’t this seem awful child-like? It’s hard to to bring others into the forum as a place for intelligent, adult conversation with things like “Buddy Clubs” tossed around.
This has been addressed in previous posts — a search shows this as one of the answers. Note that you can also have your firewall block access to just the auto update program, as well. Be aware, however, that the old version was not upgraded when the latest security vulnerability and patch was announced.
http://www.quinnware.com QCD has a plugin that will update your Yahoo Messenger status with what’s playing in QCD right now. Plugin is called YM Status 0.0.1b and is available from the General Plugins section.
You’re not the only one — myself and everyone I know who uses the newest Yahoo Messenger on a Win9x/WinME system has the same experience. Idle time is now completely broken for us. Unless you’re actually using the Yahoo Messenger itself, you will be set as idle at your preset time — even if you’re actively using your computer. It’s been especially inconvenient since Yahoo doesn’t have the ability to automatically change status message after a pre-determined amount of time. So our choices are either disable idle time completely making people believe we are always there … or keep it enabled and risk having people believe we are not there even if we are.
Unfortunately, the new version still doesn’t address the idle bug that afflicts Win9x users. I’m still set to idle no matter if I’m using the computer or not.
