messenger

After months of leaked bits, Microsoft's Skype division is finally opening the informational tap.

We've already seen and now used the new Windows 8 Skype client. We've heard there's a Windows Phone 8 Skype client coming -- though it's still not in the Windows Phone Store and Skype reps are not sharing more on when it will be.

On November 6, the Skype team provided more information about its recently stated plans to ultimately replace Windows Live Messenger with Skype. The planned cutover date is quite aggressive: It's Q1 2013, according to a new … Read more

Facebook hopes to make it easier to for users to chat and upload multiple photos on their mobile devices through a new iOS app released today.

In addition, the camera feature lets users add different filters to their photos, a la Instagram -- owned by Facebook. Twitter is also moving to add photo filters to its mobile app in a bid to stay competitive.

For messaging, you can swipe to the left anywhere in the app to see who's available for messaging, and mark friends you message the most in your Favorites. Facebook says the new Camera upload process … Read more

Yahoo Messenger has been a staple of audio and text chats for a long, long time, and video chats are now handled without problem. The latest version of Yahoo Messenger adds enhancements to contacts and friends lists, as well as support for newsfeeds and visual tweaks. Yahoo Messenger installs easily but does require a free account.

Yahoo Messenger has long been used for text chats, for which it was a favorite app. The addition of audio and video chats put Yahoo Messenger up against a lot of other similar products, but it has remained a popular app on Windows. Each … Read more

Mozilla's Social API has activated in Firefox Beta today with its first partner, Facebook Messenger. The innovation has the potential to forever alter how browsers interact with social-networking sites, but the project is still in its infancy.

The Social API (turn it on here: Firefox Beta or Firefox Aurora) looks at the problem of how to integrate modern social networking into the browser, Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla's director of Firefox Engineering, said during a phone conversation with CNET. "People don't use social like they use other parts of the Web. It's not task based; it's … Read more

Yahoo Messenger Archive Decoder by eNetGuru is, as you would expect, a Windows utility for accessing and reading the content of messages and conferences on Yahoo Messenger. For Yahoo Messenger Archive Decoder to work, you must have enabled the option to save conversations within Yahoo Messenger. If that's on, then Yahoo Messenger Archive Decoder displays the conversations in a window for convenient scrolling through the contents.

Yahoo Messenger Archive Decoder installs easily. Once installed, you navigate to the location where the archives are saved and can choose any archived conversation there (each username has its own file). Click on … Read more

WhatsApp Messenger is an iOS (and other platform) messaging app that allows notifications to be pushed instantly. It doesn't require usernames or logins, using just your phone number as your unique ID. And, unlike some messenger apps, WhatsApp Messenger is always on. The download is fast and the install is easy.

WhatsApp Messenger has an pretty standard interface with a list of clients and a chat window for each ongoing chat session. A neat feature is setting up group chats and being able to share video and music with others at the same time. Since WhatsApp Messenger uses your … Read more

So you Skype; do you OoVoo too? Because OoVoo is a free HD video, voice, and IM chat app that lets you chat with up to 12 friends at once (6 via video and 6 on the phone). It records voice and video on your hard drive, not an online account, so file size is unlimited. You can use OoVoo to share large files (up to 25MB) as well as make phone calls to landlines, text chat, record video messages up to 1 minute long, and do a whole lot of other cool things. Mobile and tablet users have a … Read more

While Big Bird might be feeling a bit vulnerable to winding up on a list of endangered fictional species of late, "Sesame Street" colleague Cookie Monster appears to be expanding its range by at least 48 million miles, showing up recently on Mercury.… Read more