posted by Tolga I just received a call from a friend who wants to give feedback on PC-to-PC Voice Call feature of Messenger. He told me that he called his parents in Pakistan who are on a dial-up (56k) connection, and he says in less than 3 seconds he was listening to his parent’s voice. Wahoo!! That’s awesome feedback! Hello I am Tolga, Program Manager for the Voice and Video features of Windows Live Messenger. I work with a small group of individuals whose mission is to connect people and provide high quality communication experiences on any network around the world. It is a sometimes tough and challenging job but is still a lot of fun, as we have a great team. We have made quite a few improvements under the hood over the last year. If you downloaded our latest beta (download.live.com) and are having voice or video calls with other beta users then you have already experienced them first hand. Faster Call Connect Time.  This would be the first thing that you’ll notice when you call a friend using our latest Windows Live Messenger. You will be connected and talking in less time than ever before! Not only that but we’ve done quite a bit to improve the sound clarity and video sharpness in addition to adding higher resolution video modes (if your hardware and connection supports it). We believe you’ll be quite happy with the improvements our team has made here. As hardware technology advanced, so did we: If you have a dual core PC, recent webcam and fast broadband connection; you

  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 m

    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.

     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 particul