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Yahoo! Opens up Their Instant Messenger

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Jun 20, 2006 06:21 AM
from the all-this-cooperation-is-making-me-nervous dept.
Yahoo! Communications
prostoalex writes "Reuters is reporting on the new release of Yahoo! Messenger, which will allow third-party applications and plugins to run within the Messenger environment. From the article: 'Initial partners include 30 Boxes, a calendar-sharing site that competes with Google Calendar, commodities trading site Hedgestreet.com and Pando.com, which offers a service for sharing videos or other files via BitTorrent technology. More than 100 mini-programs will be available initially.' The application is currently available in beta. Relatedly, Microsoft is removing the beta warning label from Windows Live Messenger and promises better voice communications, landline calls and future integration with Yahoo! Messenger."

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[+] Ask Slashdot: Phishing in Yahoo! Geocities? 54 comments
Van Cutter Romney asks: "I've received a lot of phishing IMs on my Yahoo! Messenger from contacts whose accounts I guess have been hacked into. All the phishing messages lead to Geocities websites like this where the user is displayed a Yahoo! login page. For most people, the page looks legitimate and they enter their Yahoo! username and password (I was nearly fooled once). Since both the website (Geocities) and the messenger belong to Yahoo!, I'd like to know if they are doing to anything to counter these attacks."
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Yahoo! Opens up Their Instant Messenger | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 127 comments | Search Discussion
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  • One thing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PunkOfLinux (870955) <mewshi@mewshi.com> on Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:23AM (#15567850)
    (http://www.mewshi.com/)
    I'm wondering... Will they make it so that ANY of this runs on Linux? If not, why should I care?

  • Yay! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Vo0k (760020) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:24AM (#15567855)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday August 18 2004, @07:52AM)
    Another 5000 zombies for my botnet! Where's the API? Starting to write my "3rd party app" right now!

    • Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kjart (941720) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:44AM (#15567926)

      Not that I don't find that comment funny, but I'm curious why AOL adopting a 3rd party addon model is seen as a security hazard (I'd wager a decent chunk of /. feels that way - could be wrong) whereas Firefox is considered a secure browser.

      Then again, it is AOL.

      [ Parent ]

      • Re:Yay! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by chromatic (9471) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @02:06PM (#15571398)
        (http://wgz.org/chromatic/)

        It's difficult to imagine a web browser plugin that could harass millions of other web browser users as easily as an instant messenger client plugin could harass millions of other instant messenger users.

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Yay! by kjart (Score:1) Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:13AM

        • Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Vo0k (760020) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:29AM (#15568114)
          (Last Journal: Wednesday August 18 2004, @07:52AM)
          Security vulnerablities = bugs. These are avoided at all cost, and hard to spot. Malicious code is a different cup of tea. Should be much easier to spot and result in immediate reporting of the malicious extension. Even if one in a thousand of users takes a peek at the source, that's enough to prevent malicious pieces of code from executing.

          Additionally, a browser uses a "pull" method to get data: User requests data, gets response. May visit a site with malicious extension and the site may try to trick them into installing it, once visited, but no visit - no risk. IM uses "push-pull", with the "push" part more dangerous - the IM is listening and reacts to incoming requests from outside, the malicious code can contact everyone on contact list and send itself to vulnerable clients, no action on side of the user may be required. A browser vulnerablity will infect users visiting given site using vulnerable browser. A IM vulnerablity will infect all on-line users of the IM.

          Of course these are just qualitative differences - IM idea is simply more dangerous than browser one, but both can be vulnerable. And there's a matter of user base. Users of AOL are most likely to install a program a friend from their contact list suggests them to install.
          [ Parent ]
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • I know what will happen... (Score:2, Funny)

    by damburger (981828) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:29AM (#15567870)

    I will get people complaining that because I use GAIM I can't install their fancy new plugins.

    Then they will vanish from the internet. Forever.

    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • AOL Triton?? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by gelfling (6534) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:30AM (#15567873)
    (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Monday October 29, @07:20AM)
    Dear lord why are they making shit programs like this. Do you actually know someone who wants to use their computer to videochat at the same time they're talking to someone and IMing a third while downloading something? These IM clients have morphed into horribly bloated slow, cranky fragile pieces of junk. Just what we need - an MS lab project that they magically took the 'beta' tag off even though its the same junk as last week - to compete in the same space as all the other junk.

    And of course it will be lashed into WGA and have about 3 million vulnerabilities that never finish getting patched. OK I'm getting closer to a wholesale Mac swap everyday.

    • Re:AOL Triton?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kjart (941720) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:40AM (#15567906)
      Do you actually know someone who wants to use their computer to videochat at the same time they're talking to someone and IMing a third while downloading something?

      Yes, I do - young people. Based on your ID, I'd guess you don't fit into that demographic (but I could be wrong).

      [ Parent ]

      • Re:AOL Triton?? (Score:4, Funny)

        by petabyte (238821) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:55AM (#15568261)
        I know you're right but that does make me feel very old. Teenagers today can video conference, cell phone, IM, myspace, iTunes, etc all at once. Back in my day, *gets out cane*, if you got IE 3.0 and AIM working life was good. My cousin in elementary school has a better laptop and cell phone than I do. I know there are people on this site who fondly remember punchcards, but kids today.

        Get off my yard!

        *marks himself DEPRECATED and schedules date for port removal*
        [ Parent ]

      • Re:AOL Triton?? (Score:5, Funny)

        by anaesthetica (596507) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @08:50AM (#15568684)
        (http://slashdot.org/~anaesthetica/journal/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 30, @01:22PM)
        Wow. I think this is the one instance I've ever seen where having a dramatically higher UID actually gave you more cred. Jeez, next thing you know, Macs will be running on Intel chips...
        [ Parent ]
    • Re:AOL Triton?? by Davus (Score:3) Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:42AM
    • Re:AOL Triton?? by Sexy Bern (Score:1) Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:55AM
    • Re:AOL Triton?? by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:10AM
    • Re:AOL Triton?? by cgenman (Score:3) Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:39AM
    • Zarwinski by Kadin2048 (Score:2) Tuesday June 20 2006, @08:39AM
    • Re:AOL Triton?? by strudeau (Score:2) Tuesday June 20 2006, @09:22AM
    • Re:AOL Triton?? by bealzabobs_youruncle (Score:1) Tuesday June 20 2006, @09:30AM
    • Re:AOL Triton?? by OldeTimeGeek (Score:1) Tuesday June 20 2006, @08:19AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Too bad... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tacarat (696339) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:33AM (#15567883)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday July 28 2004, @09:51AM)
    Here's the link to the story that they forgot [reuters.com]. A pity, though. They're only opening up the IM for extra, user made, modules. I was hoping they published code for the Yahoo messenger for the community. Hell, I'd be happy if they'd just update the linux version or at least make the current versions more WINE friendly. I'd like my voice chat and video, please.
    • Re:Too bad... by pimpimpim (Score:2) Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:17AM
      • Re:Too bad... by tacarat (Score:1) Tuesday June 20 2006, @12:01PM
    • Re:Too bad... by mavenguy (Score:1) Tuesday June 20 2006, @08:26AM

  • Y!M Newest Feature (Score:5, Funny)

    by demongeek (977698) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @06:46AM (#15567930)
    Viral infections and data mining tools that work from WITHIN the messenger itself. No more need to open up those nasty attachments, have a plugin that automagically executes files of all times and dials home without you ever needing to think about it....
  • I would not be surprised to see Yahoo! instant messenger to integrate with Yahoo! Maps. That's a trend that MS, Google and Yahoo are definitely focussing on. You can already map your Jabber contacts on Google Maps or Google Earth [slashgeo.org]. Yahoo! Maps licensing restrictions were also alleviated considerably [slashgeo.org] during last week's Where 2.0 conference.

  • WildTangent anybody? (Score:2, Informative)

    by plebeian (910665) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:11AM (#15568011)
    O boy they are following the AOL-Wildtangent model..... Free with one IM program you get a bonus of Spyware!!!(oops I mean an enhanced browsing experience). Just what the world needs.

  • Fascinating... (Score:1)

    by RazvanA (983741) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:21AM (#15568069)
    ...how Slashdot has become a backdoor for cheap marketers. There is no link to TFA and on Yahoo! Messenger plugins there is no plugin for 30boxes a "a calendar-sharing site that competes with Google Calendar". Naughty naughty

  • Stability, Security, and Efficiency (Score:1)

    by fedak (868908) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:29AM (#15568115)
    (http://www.fedak.net/)
    I'd trade all this crap for an older version of YIM that didn't crash constantly.
    (The current version has a buggy network library that crashes when you switch back and forth between networks, something I do frequently as I switch between my client's VPNs)

    The good news is that this will finally make it possible for someone to write a decent tightly integrated encryption module.
    Boggles my mind that all of the major IM clients are still sending plaintext across the network. I'd love to be able to use IM at client sites w/o my conversations ending up in the clients logs.

  • And NOW Ads! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Blahbooboo3 (874492) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:31AM (#15568125)
    Yes, and don't forget the best part of the new beta. An advertisment at the bottom that you can't get rid of! Wonderful. I am downloading the current non-beta version and saving that one for future use forever.

  • Firefox icon on sample desktop for Y!M (Score:1)

    by Mini-Geek (915324) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:34AM (#15568149)
    (http://127.0.0.1/)
    Anybody else notice this? On the download page for the Y!M Beta, there are three icons besides the msgr8us.exe one: Internet Exploder, Mozilla Firefox, and ymsgr7.exe.
    http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/msg/7/scr/d ownload_ns_step2_2.gif [yimg.com] Here is the picture with the Firefox icon.

  • Yahoo Messenger opening (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kckman (885561) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:36AM (#15568156)
    I applaud Yahoo for opening Messenger to 3rd Party modules. For those people who use the service, myself among them, Yahoo must update Messenger for OSX, Linux. It is blatent disregard for the market that they are lax in updating non-Windows Messenger. This "tool" is the only Windows application I use, and the only one keeping me from leaving dual-boot Windows/Linux behind forever in favor of Linux.

  • Damn! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jessta (666101) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @07:53AM (#15568252)
    (http://www.jessta.id.au/)
    Damn, When I read that heading I thought maybe yahoo was going to open up their messager protocal.
    This doesn't even deserve to involve the word 'open'. But it can use the word 'API'

  • Great! (Score:2)

    by jj00 (599158) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @08:38AM (#15568598)
    Now how about opening the calendar and address book?

  • Two things... (Score:2, Informative)

    by WWWWolf (2428) <wwwwolf@iki.fi> on Tuesday June 20 2006, @08:46AM (#15568643)
    (http://www.iki.fi/wwwwolf/)

    First, where's the alleged link to the Reuters article referenced in the post? Never mind, 15 seconds of Google News helped.

    Anyway, the article is a bit short on details, but the promises don't sound too, er, promising. What's it, really? Now people can write Javascriptlets and new plugins for messenger?

    Yawwwwn.

    Call me back when they open-source the client, release specs for the protocol, and accept input from the larger developer community. Until then, I'll be sticking with the people [jabber.org] who have been doing all that for quite a while now.

  • Upcoming messenger integration (Score:2, Interesting)

    by adinu79 (860333) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @08:46AM (#15568645)
    Try this little experiment. Keep your mouse hovered above the top visibility drop-down. (the one that says: - Available to everyone).
    After a second of holding your mouse still, a little yellow square will appear that says:
    You appear as
    Online to 1000 Contacts
    Offline to 0 Contacts


    Microsoft LCS Status: Online to everyone


    Could this be the first sign that the client at hand already has the MSN Protocol connection modules integrated? Wonder why they're not activated at all yet, as this is the only sign I've found of this and even this seems some kind of slip from the YM Programmers.

  • Who cares? (Score:1)

    by X3J11 (791922) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @09:13AM (#15568891)
    (http://amindlost.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday September 08 2004, @11:18AM)
    Reuters is reporting on the new release of Yahoo! Messenger, which will allow third-party applications and plugins to run within the Messenger environment.

    Use Trillian. http://trillian.cc/ [trillian.cc] =)

    Really, I'm surprised Y! Messenger's not dead already. I think I have maybe one contact that uses Yahoo's messenger. Just about everyone I know uses MSN. Even ICQ's less ubiquitous than it was six years ago.

    • Re:Who cares? by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (Score:3) Tuesday June 20 2006, @10:34AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Much More Interesting... (Score:1)

    by loyukfai (837795) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @09:20AM (#15568956)
    (http://byfai.com/)
    If the topic was "Yahoo! Opens up Their Instant Messenger Protocol/Network"...

    Where is the interoperability...?

  • "opens up"? (Score:2)

    by Ant P. (974313) <anthony.parsons@manx.net> on Tuesday June 20 2006, @09:34AM (#15569084)
    Until I read the summary I thought that meant they were going to stop their practice of deliberately changing the YIM protocol every other week to break 3rd-party clients.

  • Jabber transport? (Score:2)

    by nsayer (86181) * <nsayer @ k fu.com> on Tuesday June 20 2006, @09:41AM (#15569157)
    (http://www.kfu.com/~nsayer/)
    Does this mean that we can now expect the authors of the YIM transport for Jabber will be able to better support it?

    I mean, I'd love to see Yahoo put up their own Jabber gateway, but I'm more realistic than that.

  • standardize instant messenging (Score:1)

    by superlaughtive (971688) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @10:26AM (#15569555)
    Do companies make money from their proprietary instant messengers? Is it just ad revenue? Every person I know either uses Gaim or Trillian or doesn't click on ads that show up in AOL IM. Perhaps it is just branding name attached. I am sure the competition is good somehow. Maybe it encourages innovation as each tries to outdo the other in features.

    However, when will it be that instant messenging gets a standard protocol (or regains it, i.e. IRC)? When I want to email someone, I know their address and I can email them, I don't have to think about which program they are using to read/write their email. When I want to call someone on the phone, I dial their phone number to reach them anywhere in the world.

    So, instant messenging has been around since IRC started. Now with Gaim you can treat IRC transparently as another IM client (not that you couldn't before, but now anyone can). So Gaim can symbollically merge them to make a standard protocol. The Gaim protocol, haha.

    We have seen so many different messenging systems and they all work the same. The add-ons or upgrades can be good and important - text formatting, voice, video, images. I would like to see a system where you can login to instant messenging, and have all of those features that you want, and even a Nintendo DS can login and use Pictochat. It streams each data based on a standard signal.

    Maybe it is just bound to happen and I don't have to worry about it, but it is frustrating to see other forms of communication standardized and not this. Actually it doesn't bother me in the least in day to day life, but then when you stop and think of a better alternative..

    I guess no one can just do it for free (although IRC seems to run for free, maybe most servers are at universities). We pay for our email or have ads in our gmail. Hmm.. solution? Maybe google will have one.

    • Re:standardize instant messenging (Score:5, Informative)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @11:47AM (#15570269)

      Do companies make money from their proprietary instant messengers? Is it just ad revenue?

      Both. Some companies sell "pro" IM clients and a number get ad revenue from the download page or from ads embedded in the client. The real money, of course, is in dominating the entire space so you can begin charging for access or tying to other features. No one has managed that and hopefully Google will get them to give up on it.

      However, when will it be that instant messenging gets a standard protocol (or regains it, i.e. IRC)? When I want to email someone, I know their address and I can email them, I don't have to think about which program they are using to read/write their email. When I want to call someone on the phone, I dial their phone number to reach them anywhere in the world.

      Additionally a standard protocols allows an individual or company to run their own server for security and stability reasons. Luckily, such a protocol exists. It is called Jabber and is an approved, open standard. Google has implemented it for their GTalk IM system and Apple has implemented it in their iChat program. I think GAIM supports it as does Trillian (pro only?). The difficulty is, since the existing protocols and social networks are closed, people can't easily migrate away without the ability to interchange. Hopefully, Google will take over enough of the market that other companies will see the value in being able to intercommunicate and we will all get that standard protocol and a defacto standard as well. You can already send messages via the Jabber protocol to anyone who has a Gmail account and the IM client is built into the Webmail interface to it. It works the same as e-mail for addressing, (username@gmail.com or username@somedomain.foo).

      Maybe google will have one.

      They already do. Also, Jabber is widely deployed in enterprise businesses for secure, internal messaging.

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:standardize instant messenging by seldolivaw (Score:2) Tuesday June 20 2006, @04:52PM

  • IF the API is open, we could just add GAIM (Score:1)

    by SlappyBastard (961143) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @10:30AM (#15569607)
    It would serve no practical purpose, but it would be funny to do.

  • IM 2.0? (Score:2)

    by misleb (129952) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @10:49AM (#15569752)
    So, is this the death of web 2.0? Are IM programs going to take over the desktop? Are we going to be running word processors as an IM plugin? If Yahoo IM suppose AJAX, anything is possible...

  • Heh... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zptao (979069) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @11:06AM (#15569897)
    Yahoo! is so far behind in the IM market that they shouldn't even bother. Not to mention their client sucks, of course.
    • Re:Heh... by Trejkaz (Score:2) Wednesday June 21 2006, @12:19AM

  • Another One.... (Score:1)

    by ManoSinistra (983539) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @11:36AM (#15570196)
    (http://www.xhtmlpro.com/)
    Let's see . . . my personal list of IM systems now include:
    • GAIM
    • Google Talk
    • Skype
    • ICQ
    • MSN Messenger
    • *sigh*
    I don't think I need another.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Jabber ! (Score:2)

    by BokLM (550487) * <boklm@mars-attacks.org> on Tuesday June 20 2006, @12:54PM (#15570823)
    (http://n0x.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday April 30 2006, @11:12AM)
    Now the question is: when are they going to move to Jabber ?

  • Downloads are messed up (Score:1)

    by cspark (983864) on Tuesday June 20 2006, @02:44PM (#15571675)
    If you try to install the new Beta it fails. Thinking something is not right in the "open" messenger. It also fails with older versions.
  • And yet, the world moves on and Jabber [jabber.org] continues to gain users.
  • *nt* = no text

  • yahoo should fix their infrastructure (Score:2)

    by john_uy (187459) on Wednesday June 21 2006, @01:52AM (#15574397)
    they should improve the reliability of ym services. i get disconnected most of the time.
  • 5 replies beneath your current threshold.

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