Hello everybody,

for those of you who are wondering what I've been doing since the last release, here is the answer: the custom sounds feature that was added 3 months ago quickly became more popular than anticipated and because of that, the servers had to be changed, the scripts had to be optimized, the database had to be reconstructed, etc...
During the last weeks, I did my best to fix all the little glitches that were still annoying some people from time to time (examples: a sound cannot be downloaded by a contact, random sounds always return the same thing, servers are down in the middle of the day, ...). I'm now happy to report that the sound servers' lift-off is complete and that everything is working better than ever! I highly encourage anybody who had troubles with the feature before to try again and join the millions of people who are now using the feature on a daily basis.

And to conclude this little announcement, it is my pleasure to announce that the statistics page is now back, fully operational, and much more detailed than before. It is updated once a day and you can access it at http://sounds.msgplus.net. Two months ago I was reporting 20 million sounds being exchanged. This statistic was based on several assumptions that I thought were right and, well, they weren't... now that the real statistics have finally been compiled, the astonishing number of sounds that were sent since the first day is floating around 300,000,000!!! no wonder the servers were agonizing every day at peak time .

Have fun sending sounds and continue to enjoy this year's hot summer! (or cold winter, depending where you are living).

Patchou

thats great work Patchou!  Keep up the good work

And thanks for the link to MPSounds.net 

Well done Patchou, it really is such a good feature

Thanks patchou! thats great

wooooooooooo hooooooooooo great little page, dempsey you should work on using some stats about sounds after your college work

As always, great work!

Awesome, as usual

Keep up the good work and thanks for everything

hooray! now the sounds will work again great job!

Nice to see the sounds page back up

Great Job Patchou! Keep it up!

quote:

---

Originally posted by Absorbation
wooooooooooo hooooooooooo great little page, dempsey you should work on using some stats about sounds after your college work

---

quote:

---

yea i'm planning a few new things soon 

Hurray!!! I'll waiting new sounds, I wish those coming as soon as possible.

---

Woah, big stats

nice to know that the stats page is back

Well done pitcho

nice, Patchou... thanks for all...

the stats page is very interesting, and there some sounds that really deserve be in my library

Wow great job! There are so many sounds that are non-english! Does anyone know which language uses the sounds/Plus! more than anyone?

quote:

---

Originally posted by http://sounds.msgplus.net/
Disclaimer: sounds provided by the Custom Sounds service of Messenger Plus! are sounds created by users for users therefore, we cannot be hold responsible for the content of any sound provided by this service. We do our best to moderate the database on a daily basis, sounds not suitable for a general audience are marked as private and as a result, are blocked from the statistics and the "get random sound" feature. Due to the number of sounds that are exchanged every day on this service, it is very likely that some sounds escape from our monitoring, we apologize for the inconvenience.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by coobydoo
sweet cant wait

---

Great Job Patchou, the server has running alot better lately. 

Although modding the sounds has become more of a challenge.  :/

All in all its great, keep up the good work (And I'll keep helping with the sounds) and I know everything will be worked out. 

Thanks, but how are the Plus! usage statistics you promised us several months ago coming along?

I believe the number of Danish users was at 65k back in august 2004, I'd appreciate an update on this.

kewl and thanks for the great work on fixing the problem!

Why is it so hard to get back to http://www.msgplus.net/ from http://sounds.msgplus.net/? Perhaps the sounds page could get the same header as these forums.

Brilliant work Patchou!

Now I can annoy impress others with custom sounds without any errors

I love this feature....Only problem is that I always use msn and listen to media player at the same time...Is it possible to fix this feature so that media player is muted/paused/volume adjusted so that I can hear the custom sounds?

This is awsome!

Great work.

Oh yeah another thing, it seems I can't create sounds from my .wma files. Anyone able to explain why?

Good job patchou
I also had a problem that if i use a sound for the 1st time then its to be uploaded to the server rite ???
Then if i dont use it for a few weeks then i again use it then it reuploads it
This mainly happens to the sounds that i have made
Everything else is great .... keep up the good work

Nice work Patch - Looking forward to future releases!

Unused sounds are deleted from time to time on the server so yes, sometimes, the sound will be re-uploaded, that's normal .

As for supporting wma files, I can't do it because of the size of the dlls I would have to distribute to uncompress them, sorry (if you knwo an alternative, please tell me ).

Hey Patchou,

Good job on the sounds improvements and things.  Maybe you could open up the database and create an official msgplus sounds site (like, so you can browse for individual sounds) and apply clickable links...like, msgplus://sounds.msgplus.net/gets.php?soundid=339492 or something like that.  Then all Public sounds could be browsed and stuff by users...might be a good idea. .

quote:

---

Originally posted by Patchou
As for supporting wma files, I can't do it because of the size of the dlls I would have to distribute to uncompress them, sorry (if you knwo an alternative, please tell me ).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Patchou
As for supporting wma files, I can't do it because of the size of the dlls I would have to distribute to uncompress them, sorry (if you knwo an alternative, please tell me ).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by rav0
Could it be done using Windows Media Player? (I'm no expert)

---

Patchou: Would it be possible to run a constant spider on the admin section that gets the info from each sound, doing about 1 sound a second to keep load down, then just write the name and hash in a file and upload to a seperate server (again to reduce load) for searching through?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Choli

quote:

---

Originally posted by rav0
Could it be done using Windows Media Player? (I'm no expert)

---

the user would have to have installed a compatible verison of WMP and I think Patchou does not want anyone to have 3rd party programs installed to assure that Plus will work.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Choli
Anyway, if you have WMP installed the easiest thing to do may be open the wma in WMP and save it as MP3 (this can be done in WMP, can't it?)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by rav0

quote:

---

Originally posted by Choli

quote:

---

Originally posted by rav0
Could it be done using Windows Media Player? (I'm no expert)

---

the user would have to have installed a compatible verison of WMP and I think Patchou does not want anyone to have 3rd party programs installed to assure that Plus will work.

---

Windows Media Player is part of Windows, it must be there.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised
WMP isn't a part of Windows and can be uninstalled, left out or whatever. It is however true that in most cases, some version is shipped within Windows, but it by no means a part of it. And then there is also the issue of compatibility.

---

Well, as far as I know, you need some extra redis files to manipulate wma files, even if Media Player is installer. That's why I actually didn't add support for the wma format. If I'm wrong and anybody can point me to an api of the player to decode wma into a pcm wav file, I'D be glad to add support for it .

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised
WMP isn't a part of Windows and can be uninstalled, left out or whatever. It is however true that in most cases, some version is shipped within Windows, but it by no means a part of it.

---

wich thread is going ot have the EXCITING AND GREAT news?

quote:

---

Originally posted by rav0
Windows Media Player is a part of Windows.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by rav0

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised
WMP isn't a part of Windows and can be uninstalled, left out or whatever. It is however true that in most cases, some version is shipped within Windows, but it by no means a part of it.

---

Windows Media Player is a part of Windows.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by rav0
Windows Media Player is a part of Windows.

---

Patchou,
there was a upgrade to custom sounds 2 or 3 nights ago and every since i have been having trouble sending custom sounds could you check on it i can't even send premade souds without getting the trouble contacting server message. and i have not changed any settings on my security settings

quote:

---

Originally posted by c33brown
Patchou,
there was a upgrade to custom sounds 2 or 3 nights ago and every since i have been having trouble sending custom sounds could you check on it i can't even send premade souds without getting the trouble contacting server message. and i have not changed any settings on my security settings

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Guido

quote:

---

Originally posted by c33brown
Patchou,
there was a upgrade to custom sounds 2 or 3 nights ago and every since i have been having trouble sending custom sounds could you check on it i can't even send premade souds without getting the trouble contacting server message. and i have not changed any settings on my security settings

---

Same problem here:

http://shoutbox.menthix.net/showthread.php?tid=47554

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by wj

quote:

---

Originally posted by Guido

quote:

---

Originally posted by c33brown
Patchou,
there was a upgrade to custom sounds 2 or 3 nights ago and every since i have been having trouble sending custom sounds could you check on it i can't even send premade souds without getting the trouble contacting server message. and i have not changed any settings on my security settings

---

Same problem here:

http://shoutbox.menthix.net/showthread.php?tid=47554

---

I'm looking into this issue, It seems to be mostly prevalant durring peak times, I'm hoping to have some sort of explanation for it this weekend at the latest.

---

Is this the right thread .... if not then please direct me ..... ill re post it there

quote:

---

Originally posted by John Anderton

I couldnt send sounds yesterday (thursday) Thats the 1st time its happened. And my sound (ones i record) should be uploaded only once right ??? If i use a sound after a few weeks then it is reuploaded Any problem ???

---

I love the cusom sound emotions but i wish ther was a feature saying download all current sound and a update that autoaticaly got new sounds everytime you sign on

quote:

---

Originally posted by Killers2
love the cusom sound emotions but i wish ther

---