Yahoo Messenger is a free service that allows you to see when friends come online and to send them instant messages. It also can alert you to new e-mail in your Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Personals accounts, or when you have
upcoming events recorded in your Yahoo Calendar. Yahoo Messenger offers firewall support, a standby mode that minimizes the program until an Internet connection is made, the ability to save and print your conversations, and a tabbed interface that provides quick access to your favorite stocks, news, and sports scores.
Other features include the ability to create a chat room automatically, stock price alerts, the ability to send messages to friends (even if they're not online when you are), a Quick Compact mode that hides the Messenger tools to maximize your viewing area, Messenger Themes, and voice chat, which allows you to talk for free to anybody else on the Internet. It also includes Launchcast Radio, Yahoo Games, and Yahoo Audibles. Using a Webcam, you can see who you're chatting with or view the Webcam of any Yahoo member who has granted you access.
Version 9.0 adds a redesigned interface, the ability to view Flickr photos and videos in the chat window, and friend importing from other e-mail and chatting networks. It also adds Yahoo Pingbox, which lets you chat with Web site owners in real time.
Yahoo Messenger 9 retains all the voice, chat, and drag-and-drop capabilities of its predecessors, and adds a lot more visual pizazz and some key functionality. One biggie feature is contact importing, which scours your other IM, e-mail, and social-networking accounts for friends that are also signed up on Yahoo IM.
You can then ask some or all of your friends to add you and can invite others to sign up. Another favorite new trick is the ability to see images and videos displayed inside the chat window when you or a pal drops in a public URL.
Other notable changes include the visual skin picker to switch up the look, and Pingbox, a chat window site owners can embed to chat with visitors in real time. Users should note that the download stub will finish installing the program online, and that the download bundles the Yahoo Toolbar. In the preinstallation window, click over to Custom Install to deselect add-ons you don't want. We could also live without the heavy-handed Yahoo branding, and it would be nice to see a link to hidden smileys in the emoticon drop-down, but these are minor niggles when weighed against the benefits of an easy-to-use, feature-rich chat client that only continues to improve.
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