Yahoo! Me enger eak peek

There was a time when Yahoo! Me enger on OS X, well, sucked. That time has long since pa ed thanks to the great Mac focused team that Yahoo! has created (the Mac team may be small, but they are pa ionate). I was able to sit down with Matthew Skyrm, Director of Product Management for Yahoo! Me enger, and take a look at what Yahoo! is cooking up for the next beta. It looks good folks, really good.

The UI won't be changing too much, but it will be modified to allow for some new features:

• Ta - this one is huge. We all know ta , and the team decided to go with the cla ic one IM window with ta on the bottom. If you close the window, it only closes the Tab that you are currently in (which is a nice touch).
• Voice chat su ort - one of the most highly requested features it would seem. You can make free computer to computer calls and you can even call phones (and have a phone number a ociated with your Yahoo! Me enger) thanks to Yahoo! Voice.
• A new notificatio section - one of the nice things about Yahoo! Me enger is that you can IM someone who i 't online and they'll get that IM when they sign on. Sadly, that mea if you haven't been online in a while you can face an o laught of windows when you start up Me enger. Ta remedy this somewhat, but the good folks at Yahoo! went one step further and create a new section in Me enger that will show you, in your buddy list, any IMs you might have mi ed. You will find your voice mail here, yes you will be able to get voice mail on Yahoo! Me enger.
• Archiving - finally the next beta will offer a way for you to archive your me ages, and not just in an ugly text file. It is clear that the team ent some serious time on the UI for the archives, and it shows. The archives also offer full otlight integration so now you can search your IMs just as easily as you can search the rest of your Mac.

I tried to get a firm date for the release of this beta, but that Matthew is cagey. He told me to expect it sometime in the next several months because he would 'rather be vague than late.' Fair enough. This beta of Yahoo! Me enger is looking to be a very compelling upgrade, my only complaint is that I didn't get one bit of Yahoo! swag. Perha next Macworld.