posted by Steven

Just about 2 weeks into the beta and we’re getting great uptake and comments from all of you.  Today I wanted to take a few moments and talk in more detail about a fun feature that we’ve added to Windows Live Messenger and how it came about.

When we were sitting around brainstorming ideas for new features in Messenger, some of the team was saying we have to do webcam display pictures. Everyone will want to use their webcam to make expressive video tiles. Makes sense. I need a picture of myself to put up in Messenger and there’s a camera plugged in facing me – seems like a no-brainer. Well this was just the beginning. The team started developing this idea that was based on dynamic display pictures which allow you to set a mood for an avatar.

Why do you need a mood tile? Lets say you are in a conversation with your best friend and they say: “Hey guess who is coming to my birthday party? and you say “Who?”, and he says: “Your ex-girlfriend” This would be a great time to have a mood tile. With mood tiles you can change your appearance of your display picture to react dynamically to the conversation.

Open the display pictures dialog by clicking on your display picture from the main window Click on the button that says “Tile with Moods” – you need to have a Webcam installed. Here is the one I use.

Here you are presented with a dialog that allows you to take five still frames or five, 4-second video clips that you can make into a dynamic Mood tile. Clicking on the camera or webcam button records the frame or clip. When you are satisfied with what you recorded, click on the next empty box and record/capture the next mood. Each mood has a corresponding emoticon. You can modify which emoticon is used for each mood. The default capture is what your display picture will look like most of the time.

When you are in a IM conversation with someone you can show your mood tile off by pressing the keystrokes for the emoticons.

Here is a quick video which shows off how this might play out for you.

If you want to create a video display picture without the mood options you can do that too. Open up the display picture dialog, click Webcam Snapshot and either capture a still frame or 4-second video to set as your display picture. Put on your funniest expression and have some fun.

- Steven

  posted by Steven

We know people like to personalize Messenger. Colorization, display picture, friendly name and personal status message have been the main surfaces for self-expression in Messenger for a while. In this next version of Messenger we wanted to give users a new surface that allowed them to both theme their main window with pictures and images that were meaningful to them but also make them social by applying them to the conversation windows of your network. Scenes is one of those features that when people see it for the first time they get it right away. Think of it as the wallpaper in your IM salon. When you change your scene your network gets to keep up with you and your mood.

So you might be asking yourself why would I want a Scene? Well here is an example of how I used scenes in Messenger. When I returned from family summer vacation in Southern California I wanted to stay in a “beach” mood. Messenger and Windows Live made that easy. This is what I did.

There were three photos my wife took that really summed up the great time we had in California.

The weather was beautiful and the waves were awesome. (That isn’t me). The third photo was a picture of my daughter on the carousel in Long Beach.

When I launched Messenger I clicked on the curl in the upper right corner of the main window of Messenger:

This opens up the Select a Scene dialog. From here I could browse to the picture I wanted to theme my main window and the conversation windows of the people I IM with. Messenger comes with a few scenes which you can use or you can pick your own by clicking the Browse button from this dialog. You can pick any PNG or JPEG photo to paint your main window. Be sure to pick one that can scale larger for the conversation window of your contacts. They’ll get to see what you picked!

From this dialog I can also let Messenger auto-select a complimentary matching color for the rest of the Messenger main window, or I can further customize it by selecting my own favorite color.

You can preview the changes by clicking the Apply button.

You can also just drag and drop photos directly on to the top of the main window from Photo Gallery or from your pictures folders. When you do this Messenger auto-selects a matching color as well.

Here’s the video we posted the other day on updating your scene just in case you didn’t see it.

On Monday I set my scene to the picture of the surfer. When my friends IM’d me the conversation window  had the picture of the surfer. Lots of people asked me about my vacation and I shared other photo albums with them on Windows Live.

On Tuesday I set my scene to the picture of the sunset and Wednesday the picture of the carousel.

The nice part about setting the pictures every day was that every time I launched Messenger I was reminded of all of the good times we had and in every conversation window there was something my friends and I could talk about.

It’s also important to note that others (currently only others that are using the Beta version) will see your scene when you IM with them.  This is by design.  One of the product managers referred to scenes as analogous to the clothes you wear.  Many people use fashion as a way to express themselves and scenes give you an opportunity to do that digitally, through Windows Live Messenger.

This is V1 of scenes and I am really interested to get people’s feedback on the feature so that can take it to the next level in the next version of Messenger.

-Steven

 posted by Lonn

Hi everyone, it's been a week since we've launched the beta and we're really pleased by the overall positive comments we've heard, both on this blog and throughout the media.

As with any beta, things might not always be perfect and we appreciate you trying it out and letting us know what you think.  I've been reading through the comments and forwarding all the bugs and feedback on to the Messenger team.  Because of the amount of feedback we get it's impossible to personally respond to all of you, but just wanted to say thanks again.  It's particularly helpful when you provide steps to reproduce your problem.

All major issues have been logged and are being addressed.  Here are a few that I wanted to quickly comment on, that were brought up by some of you.

- Custom emoticons don't display properly to the user. (We're working on fixing this... Fyi, they do show up to the person you are sending them to).

- Changing your status using the drop down menu can cause errors with the layout.  This is a known issue around High Dpi.  The work around (for now) is to your the File menu to change status.

- Ad content.  I've brought up some of the concerns raised about the contents of a few ads with the advertising team and they are looking into this further.

Regarding feature requests/changes.  We will continue to work towards the final release and feedback like yours is taken into account along with input from many other sources.  In the end, we're confident that we will have an extremely solid product that we're all proud of and that you will love to use.

Btw, in the next few days, if you are still using a previous beta build of Windows Live Messenger that came out earlier this year, you will receive a prompt/message to upgrade to the latest beta version. We strongly encourage you to accept the upgrade and give us any feedback on the upgrade experience. Yes, we care and just thought we’d give you a heads up!  All of you that have downloaded the latest beta version over the past week, won't see the prompt and can ignore this friendly notice. :)

Lastly, I've had the pleasure of using the new version of Windows Live Hotmail over the past little while as an internal tester and highly encourage all of you to check it out when the upgrades begin to go public very soon.  It's cool and it's super fast!

Thanks and talk to you more soon.

Lonn

Posted by Aaron

After months and months of hard work (and a lot of fun!) the Windows Live Messenger team is proud to release our latest beta! I’m so excited I dressed up for this post!

If you love Messenger as much as we do, head over to http://download.live.com and grab the new beta. If the beta is not available for your area just yet, keep checking back throughout the day. We always welcome your feedback, so head over to the forums and let us know what you think. If you run into a problem check out the help page. Also head over to Windows Live Wire to see where Windows Live is going.

Over the next few weeks the Messenger bloggers and I will be going through many of the new features in more detail. For today, I’ll give you a brief highlight.

Favorites.

                If you are like me, you have a few IM buddies you chat with a little more frequently than others. People like your family, best friends, or significant other hold a special place in your heart, and now they hold a special place in your favorite IM client.

Groups.

                Messenger has had groups for some time now, but they were nothing like the new Groups! You can create a group of friends that has its own conversation window, among many other benefits. It’s a whole new way to stay in touch with your sports team, community group, or just a bunch of friends.

What’s New Feed.

                Any time your buddies update their Space, add photos, change their display picture or PSM you’ll get a quick notification in the What’s New Feed. It is a great way to keep up to date with your friends.

New Look and Feel.

                This is probably the first new thing you’ll see when you install the beta. A lot has changed in the latest version, from the main window to the conversation window, there are all sorts of visual changes to make Messenger even better.

Personalization.

                Messenger has always had great ways to express yourself, but in the latest version we take it to a whole new level. Dynamic display photos, animated display photos, and hyperlinked personal status message URLs,.. but the most dramatic feature has to be Scenes. Wait until you see it!

Sign in from multiple places at the same time.

                Now you can sign in to Messenger from several locations at once! Keep your home PC logged in and sign in at work, school, or the local internet café for a quick chat with friends without signing off your home PC.

Photo sharing

                Messenger now lets you share photos in your conversation like never before. Two-way, fully synchronous photo sharing is a really sweet way to share photos.  

There are tons more features that I just don’t have time to talk about, so head on over to the http://download.live.com to grab the beta and explore all the new features for yourself. Stay tuned to MessengerSays for detailed posts about all of the features above in the coming weeks!

  posted by Dharmesh

Greetings Messenger fans –

One of the benefits of working at a place like Microsoft is that there are all sorts of teams working on cool technology that we get to share with each other.  Messenger just benefited from such a group within Microsoft Research that focuses on translation technologies.  Which is great for a person like me that has friends who speak another language - especially since I often need help remembering translations.

If you want to interact with the new translator agent, just click here or add mtbot@hotmail.com to your contact list and start chatting. You can have one-on-one conversations with the bot where it will respond with the translation.  Or you can invite a friend and each chat in a different language with the bot translating between you. 

Today, the bot can translate:

• English to/from:
  • Arabic
  • Chinese Simplified
  • Chinese Traditional
  • Dutch
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Portuguese
  • Russian (Russian --> English only)
  • Spanish
• Chinese Simplified <-> Chinese Traditional

The team will continue to add more languages over the next several months.  So if you're looking for a particular language / translation, definitely let us know.

And for another cool use of the same technology, check this out: http://www.windowslivetranslator.com.