Posted by Jason

That's right - now you can show your RPS prowess to your Messenger buddies around the world!

To play, just log in to Messenger, open a conversation window with a buddy, and select Rock Paper Scissors from the games dropdown.  Rock Paper Scissors can provide you and your friends with a few minutes of fun or the ultimate online decision making tool.

Enjoy!

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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 Jason

The launch of the Windows Live Messenger 8.5 Beta introduced a new member of the emoticon family:  aka ('.').

You may be wondering how this bunny came to be... Here's the scoop:

Every year, Microsoft sponsors a giving campaign among its employees, and one of the events we do to raise money is a charity auction.  This last year's auction, whoever donated the most money got to pick the next emoticon we added.  As you may recall, this is how the  emoticon came into being.  This year's winner was a Microsoft employee named Andrew.  He chose a bunny in honor of his daughter, Natasha.

This little raised about $1500 for charity.  Microsoft matches most employee's charitable contributions, so the total amount that went to charity was actually closer to $3000.

As always, we'd love to hear your ideas for new emoticons - you won't have to donate $1500!  (But feel free to donate to your favorite cause if you feel moved to do so!)  We received lots of great ideas when I asked for your suggests a few months ago.  Keep the suggestions coming!

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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 Nicole

I am going to be taking a hiatus from work until next year and so you will not be reading posts from me on MessengerSays for a while. Writing posts for MessengerSays is one of my favorite things to do at work - I am definitely going to miss it, who knows maybe I will sneak a post or two in. During that time the of course rest of the MessengerSays bloggers will be keeping at it.

If you are curious I am going on hiatus to spend time with my first child - a boy, due on June 24th, and yes a name has been decided but my husband and I are keeping it a secret

Blog ya later!

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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.