posted by Nicole

Problem: You can't remember the keystroke or code for an emoticon.

Solution: An emoticon list for Windows Live Messenger....

I know this is not original there are other lists out there, but this one is brought to you by MessengerSays and is up-to-date for Windows Live Messenger 8.1

What's up with the categories? I made up the categories below, you will notice my creativity started to deminish at the end. If you have a better way to categorize emtocions that you would like to share please provide a link to it in the comments.

Instructions: Print the picture below and stick it... where ever you want  

To find out more about the i'm emoticon read this...

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If you have a comment/question/concern/discussion topic/rant/rave/other - please head over to the Windows Live Messenger Newsgroup.

posted by Nasa

Have you used sharing folders yet?

Do you know how to change your background?

Have you played games with your friends ....

or started a video conversation?

For those who wanted basic tips on how to use Messenger, check out our new website with short tutorials, with pictures! Now that's cool.

Speaking of cool ...  Don't miss these free display pictures & backgrounds created exclusively for Windows Live Messenger. (hint: if you hit refresh on this web page, you may see new ones show up!)

I'm currently using this one on the left. It's quite spiffy!

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If you have a comment on this post please comment! For other questions/concerns/discussion topics/rants/raves/etc - please head over to the Windows Live Messenger Newsgroup.

posted by Wendy the Mighty

Afternoon

If you remember my last blog (click here to refresh your memory - and your browser), I was left eating a Caesar's Salad (plain, for those who are truly curious) and trying to get through some test cases.  Not succeeding, mind you, but trying.

1:00pm - This afternoon finds me at my desk, happily munching on my salad.  I decide that now is a good time to check up on my email, as I haven't even glimpsed at it in the last few hours and email, much like rabbits, tend to multiply out of control unless one sternly takes them in hand.  [Aside: We have rabbits in Redmond.  All over the campus!  I love watching them hoppity hoppity.  They look embarrassingly productive. :)]  So that's what I do.  Munch my lunch, and read my email.  Yawn.  Let's move on, shall we?

1:45pm - Lunch completed, I now attempt, once again, to return to my test cases.  This time, I am more determined so I set my email to "OOF - Out of Office" and set my Personal Status Message on Messenger to  "Do not Disturb Unless there is a Fire or Someone has Donuts".  I would nail my office door shut but (1) I may have to.. well.. you know... leave at some point and (2) my officemate may become cranky with me.  Hiding works wonders and I actually get through a few test cases before....

2:20pm - I realize that I am going to be terribly blocked on a large-ish number of my test cases if I don't modify a few of my tools.  It has been something I have been MEANING to get to, but hey.  Did I mention the four iterations of Messenger?!?  Also, I sleep sometimes.  And sometimes I eat NOT AT MY DESK.  So, I am thinking "No time like the present!" and I pull out some code I inherited and start spec'ing out the changes I am going to have to make to get my test cases run.  Specifically, I need to try to figure out how the heck am I going to test how Messenger reacts when (and if, of course) various servers return with a whole host of different types of Errors.  Parse errors.  Disconnect errors.  ServerBusy errors.  Etc, etc.

Now, instead of giving you a blow-by-blow of my BRILLIANT and INSIGHTFUL coding that resulted in an INCREDIBLY USEFUL tool (grin), I will instead, explain somewhat of why these tools are necessary.  Ok.  Imagine you are a Messenger User.  WHAT?!?!  The deuce you say!  A Messenger User?!?  Yes.  Imagine that you are.  Now, you, as a Messenger User might get annoyed or somewhat, dare I say, peeved if a tester (such as myself) requested that a number of livesite (i.e. "in the world") servers be made to throw errors all over the place just so I could be sure that Messenger reacts well to server errors.  Now, wouldn't you be a bit peeved?  Miffed maybe even?  Exactly.  And yet, as a diligent Messenger tester, I must make sure that those test cases are run. 

Enter... tools.  Instead of creating havoc for you, the loyal and ever so mellow Messenger User, I am instead creating a Fake Server.  One that will throw errors on demand!  Yay!  Cool huh?!?  A FAKE server!!!  Yeah, well, each to his or her own... =)

4:30pm - Having spec'd out my FakeServer (yes, I named it FakeServer), I am now diligently coding away, creating UI, and, on occasion, looking over my emails to see if the livesite issue I saw earlier in the morning is progressing well.  Email, again, like rabbits, often misbehaves when not watched.  People might want something from me or worse, volunteer me for something.  Yikes!!  Can't have that!  "Oh, we need someone to sit in their office for the next few days doing nothing but sipping luke warm tea and reading SuperBoring™ documents while humming showtunes.  Well, Wendy will love to do that!"  Uhm... Negatory!!  If something like this occurs and I am on email, I can quickly respond with something like "Well, while I would LOVE to volunteer for this RIVETING and EXCITING venture, I am, unfortunately, allergic to SuperBoring™ documents and showtunes make me hurl.  So sorry!!  Also, my religion forbids me from drinking tea.  Luke warm tea is right out."  See?  Vigilance!  Ever, vigilance.

6:30pm - Having completed Phase I of my Great Tool Project, I am considering scooting on out the door.  And, if I had been wise, I would have done exactly that.  However, I have a small thought instead (dang those small thoughts!) and decide that if I just waited a few minutes, I could contact some of our overseas partners and make sure that they can access my FakeServer.  I mean, as sweet as it is to have a supercalifragilistic and expialidoceous FakeServer all to myself, it won't be very useful if it just sits on my desk looking lovely.  So, I wait.  Sure enough, a few of my China friends come online and I ask them if they can access my shiny new toy.   They can't, so I decide to take a few more minutes to see if I can rectify the situation....

8:30pm - Which I finally do at some unholy hour of the night.  Not that 8:30 is ghastly, but it's not nearly as nice as say 6:30 (snort).  But, diligence has paid off and my coworkers, friends, allies, partners, etc can now access the FakeServer as well.  In addition, I have also began spec'ing out Phase 2,  and I was able to spend a few minutes running yet another test case!  Woohoo!

And that was my day.  A Tuesday, in fact.  It was a long day, as a lot of them are, but there are also the days that are meeting-free with no real deliverables that find me taking a long lunch in the dog park with my neighbor and his little baby dog (or the 'lbd' as he calls him).  And there are days that I spend doing nothing but email, and days when I do nothing but code, and days when I am  running test cases, madly, in an attempt to track down a bug or make a deadline.  There are days when I ask myself what the heck am I doing here and who in the heck are these people?!?  And there are days that I can't believe that I get to do what I do AND that someone actually pays me to do it.  Like, they pay me money!  Muah ha ha ha!!!   But let's just keep that last little part between you and me, shall we?

:-D

Wendy the Mighty
got Messenger?

Posted by Jason

Hi Everyone!

I'm Jason, a Program Manager on the Windows Live Messenger team.  I've been on the team for about 9 months... I can't tell you how excited I am to be working on Messenger!  I focus on the conversation window, personal expression, and other related features.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you can't find the right emoticon or wink to express your feelings?  Or maybe that background or display picture doesn't quite fit your current mood.  Like Madonna says, you've gotta express yourself!

Here are some ways you can find the perfect content to reflect your mood:

1. Explore the featured content in the conversation window.  There's a wealth of free and purchasable content right at your finger tips.  Click the "See more offerings..." link to see even more options!
2. Use your own favorite images to create emoticons, backgrounds, and display pictures.  Images are everywhere!
3. Tell us what you'd like to see!

Is there specific personal expression content you'd like to see in Messenger?  Head on over to the newsgroup and tell us about it!  Your idea could make it in to a future version of Messenger!

Finally... for all of you hockey fans out there, the NHL has content specifically for you!  Check out http://www.nhl.com/fancentral/messenger/index.html.

Posted by Ali

Thank you to everyone who left a comment on my last post.  It was a blast to read through them all.  Our users are some of the most creative in the world.  And now without further ado,  here are the results (in no particular order):

What is your one favorite Messenger Feature?

• IM
• Video Call
• Sharing Folders
• Voice clips
• Emoticons
• Games and Activities
• OIM - Offline IM
• Nudge
• Display Picture and Personal Status Message that follow you (new 8.1 feature!  To read more about it see Nicole's post on it)
• Ability to log into Messenger with any email address (For more information, go to www.passport.com)

What one feature do you wish Messenger had?

This part can be broken up into two catagorties.  Features to be improved and new features that you want.

Features to be improved:

More Messenger Customization (Skins, emoticons, winks, games)

More feature in Mac Messenger (Go here for more information about Mac Messenger)

Better Auto-Update

Better text customization in IM (More font colors, better bold/italic support)

Better Vista Integration

New features that you want:

• Custom Animated Display Pictures
• Ability to show different status to different people or groups
• Make it easy to search for other messenger users
• Multiway Video Calling
• Display picture history
• Tabbed Windows
• Save IM conversations into Hotmail
• Spell Check
• Phone calls, ability to buy a phone number and have it go to Messenger.
• Have all Messenger clients work together.

Thanks again to everyone for your fabulous ideas.  Who knows, you may see some of these features in the future.   

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If you have a comment on this post please comment! For other questions/concerns/discussion topics/rants/raves/etc - please head over to the Windows Live Messenger Newsgroup.

posted by Wendy the Mighty

Morning

So, it seems that a number of people are terribly interested in what goes on in the deep, dark, depths of Microsoft.  Well, I gotta tell you.  You can ask every single person here at Microsoft that same question, and you would get a vastly different answer every time (grin).  So, I will give you my answer, or at least a reasonable facsimile of one, by relaying the time table of a single day as spent by me.  Specifically, a day I had last week.  If you get bored, skip to the end.  Or better yet, I'll just tell you.  It was Mrs. White.  In the library.  With the candlestick.  :P

7:00am - Wake Up.  Rising at this unholy hour (as my coworkers can attest) is an absolute anomaly for me.  I am in the middle of testing a current build of Messenger and generally stay late to communicate with China.  However, my sleep schedule, much like my diet, is subject to change at any given moment and with great frequency.

8:30am - Arrive at work, grab my hot chocolate from the Automatic Hot Chocolate Dispenser (AHCD, pronounced "auwk-ed"), and head to my office.

8:35am - I begin pawing through my huge amounts of email.  I am in an odd situation, currently, having some responsibility in four separate iterations of Messenger: the current release, the next release, the next-next release, and a "special" build.  The "special" build is one that happens when a feature is SO big, or touches SO many areas, that it is worked on separately for a bit.  And no, I am not telling you what the feature is (locks up her lips and throws away the key).  At least not yet anyway.  As for me working on four iterations of Messenger...  Well, generally, one is working on one or two iterations of Messenger.  But as I said, I am in an odd situation.

9:30am - Yes, still pawing through mail, but I have a meeting with one of my feature teams working on the next-next iteration of Messenger (Yes, this is a little confusing - this build, that build, the other build - but hey!  Welcome to my life!).  We are working on a SuperCool™ new feature, that I will blog the heck out of... when I am allowed to.  For now, it is suffice to say that the meeting ran an hour with massive discussion, heckling, and Greco-Roman wrestling (ok, I made that last one up, but wouldn't that be cool?!?) and we were all very excited when we left.  This is not an uncommon occurrence.  I love next and next-next meetings.  It's like getting a super big dose of motivation, inspiration, and anticipation all in one fell swoop.  WOOSH!!!!  Much like jumping off a plane when you didn't pack the parachute yourself (grin).  I've always landed, but there's always a risk!

10:30am - In addition to preparing for future Messenger releases, I am currently in a test pass with the current release, so I quickly hunt through my spreadsheets and try to squeeze in as many test cases as I can before someone interrupts me.  A "test case" is a scenario we testers create in order to test the look and feel, the behavior, the security, etc, of a specific feature of Messenger.  Some feature areas can squeak by with under a hundred cases, and some take hundreds just to test a single aspect of the feature.  Most of my areas hover around the one hundred count, but I have a few that literally take a few spreadsheets just to list the titles.  So, here I am testing madly.... which lasts about 5 minutes, as someone interrupts me almost immediately.

10:35am - A fellow SDET who is looking for a few quick code reviews on their test case automation enters my office (why do these things have doors?!?).  Now, for those not in the know, an SDET is a weird kind of animal in the software world.   SDET stands for Software Development Engineer in Test and should not be confused with SDEs, or just plain ol' Software Development Engineers.  SDEs are the developers who code Messenger.  SDETs are developers who code the tools necessary to test Messenger... and then they also test Messenger.  So we are like SDEs, only better (grin).  KIDDING!!  Kidding.   I am kidding.  I like giving my SDE teammates a little what-for.  Keeps them on their toes!  Heh heh.

So, I have pity on my coworker and agree to look over their work.  Reviewing their code is something I have been meaning to get to, but have been (and am still, frankly) just madly booked, but I cave and quickly begin to go over their code.  Which turns into a bit of a mistake since I then wind up code reviewing for a few others as well.  Heh heh.  Well, as a wise man - or woman - or automatically generated quote machine - once said, "No good deed goes unpunished."  And as it was written, so it was (grin).

11:40am - Code reviews behind me, and lunch staring me in the face, I return to my test cases.  I get through a grand total of two before I hit a bug.  The bug is NOT a Messenger bug, but something seems to be whonky with one or more of the servers I am hitting while testing.  I file a tracking bug, spend some time to try to narrow down which servers are causing the whonkiness and then alert the appropriate team.  This, unfortunately, takes quite a bit of time, but it's occurring "in the world" so is of a higher priority than me getting my lunch on time.  I mean, I suppose I COULD write an email to our bazillions of users saying something to the effect of "Hi!  So sorry a few of you may experience this whonky behavior, but I was feeling peckish and wanted to get some snackies before I did anything about it.  Thanks ever so much!".  I think people would respond badly, no?!?  Duty before diet!  Well, unless the cafeteria is serving Paleek Paneer.  I love Paleek Paneer.  Can't get enough of it.  Would swim in it if I could.

12:45pm - I take off to the cafeteria.  The cafeterias around Microsoft are pretty cool.  A bunch of them have special sections, in which a specific restaurant is given space.  The cafeteria nearest me has Ivar's and they make a Caesar's Salad that makes me cry like a little girl, with or without the Salmon.  This is what I buy and bring back to my office. 

Yay!  What a morning, n'est pas?  Various email sorted, meeting on a future Messenger release attended (in which pleasant chaos and mayhem ensued), code reviews done, test cases run, bugs filed.  Caesar's Salad consumption in progress.  Yes a full morning, here in the Seattle suburb, and there is even more to come!

Stay tuned for my next blog, in which I will proceed thru the afternoon and into the early evening.  I won't tell you what happens, but I will tell you that no blood is shed, no animals are hurt at any point, and I do make it home in one piece.  Well, virtually in one piece.  Technically, I suppose,  my laptop really isn't part of me... it just feels like it is.

:-B

Wendy the Mighty
got Messenger?

 posted by Nicole

Milk and cookies
Peanut butter and jelly
Ying and yang
Up and down
 and

and now another great pair....
Xbox and IM

Xbox 360 gamers and Messenger users will be able to IM together very soon (early May).  More details are here.

Dan (a Program Manager on the Windows Live Messenger team) showed me the integration this afternoon and it is really cool, just like Dan

Now when I am playing a three hour game of Zuma I will not need my computer beside me to stay up on Messenger happenings... woot!

In other news (well at least news to me)... I just found out that there is an Xbox emoticon in Messenger. To use it type: I (L) (xx)

Happy gaming and IMing....

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If you have a comment on this post please comment! For other questions/concerns/discussion topics/rants/raves/etc - please head over to the Windows Live Messenger Newsgroup.

 posted by Nicole

For my "blog post" this week I thought I would mix it up and IM with you instead. Afterwards I will provide a summary.

Was: Today (April 3, 2007) - 4pm-5pm PST

How: Using Windows Live Messenger, of course (messengerbloggers @ hotmail com)

Things to note:

• Feel free to ask anything, but of course there are pieces of information I am unable to share to with you (schedules, feature lists, etc)
• I can only read and reply in English

Update:

Thanks everyone who IMed with me this afternoon. It was really fun

Below are some of the IMs that flew back and forth. Yes I have changed the names below (except for mine) and some of the wording.

Jim says:
    Are you human?
Nicole says:
     Well I like to think of myself as a super human, but human none the less...
     I didn't write a bot for this IM session if that is what you are implying

Matt says:
     Who are you? and why are you on my Messenger list?
Nicole says:
     Nicole from MessengerSays: http://messengersays.spaces.live.com/
Matt says:
     Oh right. Messenger is brilliant

Tom says:
     Are you going to invite everyone into a group chat?
Nicole says:
     No, I am going to have 1:1 chats.
Tom says:
     Oh bye then, I just wanted to watch what everyone else was saying

William says:
     Hi!
Nicole says:
     Hi!
 <yes that was the extent of our conversation, I had several of these>

Bunny says:
     Do you give out your personal emaill address so people can contact you?
Nicole says:
     No, Messenger has over 250 Million users so that is not feasible. User can use the newsgroup, blog, support or the feedback sites to contact the Messenger team.

UKguy says:
     Hello from the UK!
SpainGirl says:
     Hello from Madrid!
Nicole says:
     Hello from Redmond, Washington!
InternationalPerson says:
     If there is another one of these next time can you change the time so I don't have to be up at 3am?
Nicole says:
     Sure thing, is 4am better  j/k yes we will have them at different times.

Maddy says:
     How do you guys think about new features Messenger should have?
Nicole says:
     We generate ideas from a lot of places - some examples brainstrom sessions, individually thinking and of course user feedback.

Hector has sent you a nudge (x50)
Hector says:
     Why aren't you answering me?
Nicole says:
     I just did. Sorry I am slow, I am talking to a lot of people at the same time.

Nelly says:
     I am running into a problem <problem here>
Nicole says:
     Not sure about that one you could try the newsgroup or Messenger support

Fluffy says:
     What is in the future version of Messenger?
Nicole says:
     Future features! Sorry I can't talk about future plans

Billy says:
     what's ur job exactly?
Nicole says:
     I am a program manager on Windows Live Messenger
Billy says:
     I wish worked on Messenger
Nicole says:
     You can! Finish college and then apply here: http://www.microsoft.com/careers/
Billy says:
     Great! Will I get to work with Bill Gates?
Nicole says:
     Although Bill works at Microsoft he doesn't work on Messener specifically.

Simon says:
     messengersays blog posts are the crazietest posts i ever read lol
Nicole says:
     is crazy good?
Simon says:
     absolutely
     i mean, really funny

Geek says:
     How many people are talking to you?
Nicole says:
     The most at one time was about 22. It is very hard to manage 22 flashing windows at once
     However hundreds of people added the MessengerBloggers email address today. Maybe people are shy

Abby says:
     Where can I report abuse of the Messenger system?
Nicole says:
     In Messenger 8.1 go to Help -> Report Abuse

Judy says:
     This was great will there be more of these sessions in the future?
Nicole says:
     Yes. Stay tuned to MessengerSays for the details

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If you have a comment on this post please comment! For other questions/concerns/discussion topics/rants/raves/etc - please head over to the Windows Live Messenger Newsgroup.