Shoutbox

Hello,

I'm a happy user of Messenger Plus! Live. From markup support to plug-ins, and even the Quick Text, this extension makes Live Messenger the best IM program ever. I'm writing this because I have a concern for one feature that I like the most from Messenger Plus! Live, the Emoticon Sounds.

From what I learned, these custom sounds are stored in an online database. There are probably millions of these sounds accumulated from the community in the database now. I noticed a lot of times, I'm having difficulties sending custom emoticon sounds and get error message telling me to "try again later". I also noticed these past several months, a routine maintenance or database refresh/cache clearing or something like that takes place on midnight Eastern Standard Time for over 2 hours every night.

It's somewhat an inconvenience for me since that time is usually the most active time when my "Groups" is most active and we aren't able to use emoticon sounds. What I'm proposing is would it be possible if the maintenance be scheduled some other time? Maybe during work hour in the morning.

And since Live Messenger Wave 4 beta is among us, I want to suggest something crazy. Is it possible to add option so that I can host my own custom Emoticon Sounds on my own web hosting server or locally? I noticed the export file of my whole library of custom sounds aren't that big. This method probably can prevent stress on the database as well.

Well that's all I want to say about this. Thanks!

Edit: Oops, I probably should have posted this at the General Talk forum. Please move thread as you see fit.

Why is there a server "middleman"? I assume it's to help facilitate the transfer of sounds with people that have crappy connections, would I be correct? If so, then would it possibly be beneficial to have the option of switching between server and local distribution?

It could be a performance boost for those of us with good broadband connections while helping to take stress off the official server. Just a few thoughts.

quote:

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Originally posted by Syco
Why is there a server "middleman"? I assume it's to help facilitate the transfer of sounds with people that have crappy connections, would I be correct?

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True. A lot of people are behind routers or firewalls these days, a direct file transfer between the two contacts is not possible a lot of the time. It is not that much crappy or slow connections, but the complexity of opening up a port to allow direct connections.

However, Messenger has voiceclips now. They are intended to send audio from a microphone, but Plus! could use the same method to pipe its own sounds through there. With the added value of people who don't use Plus! would be able to hear the sounds too. AFAIK voiceclips are sent through a server "middleman" too, but Microsoft's servers are distributed throughout the world and probably more stable than Plus!' own servers which are located in a single place. Although Microsoft might not be too happy if Plus! increased the usage of voiceclips (and thus their bandwidth) in a major way

quote:

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Originally posted by Menthix
True. A lot of people are behind routers or firewalls these days, a direct file transfer between the two contacts is not possible a lot of the time. It is not that much crappy or slow connections, but the complexity of opening up a port to allow direct connections.

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I knew there was a reason for it that I could not remember beyond cruddy connections!

Thanks for that, and yeah, the voice clip idea isn't too bad either.

The Plus! sound server is only used the first time you hear a sound to download that sound.
Once the sounds are cached/stored locally (if you have that option on), they will be played from your local storage (your HDD) already. So, as long as you don't remove or clean out your cached sounds, the Plus! sound server is not used anymore to download the sound every time you play that sound.

This is also the reason why you will only see "downloading sound..." the first time and that it takes a bit longer for the sound to be played for the first time. The later times, the sound will play instantly as it doesn't need to be downloaded again.

quote:

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Originally posted by ChiBuki
What I'm proposing is would it be possible if the maintenance be scheduled some other time? Maybe during work hour in the morning.

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Which would be smack in the middle of the active time of some other people around the world. Unfortunatly, a scheduled downtime is always going to hit somebody in the world, you can't do anything about it (other than having some kind of variation so that it aren't always the same people who are hit by it).

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
The Plus! sound server is only used the first time you hear a sound to download that sound.
Once the sounds are cached/stored locally (if you have that option on), they will be played from your local storage (your HDD) already. So, as long as you don't remove or clean out your cached sounds, the Plus! sound server is not used anymore to download the sound every time you play that sound.

This is also the reason why you will only see "downloading sound..." the first time and that it takes a bit longer for the sound to be played for the first time. The later times, the sound will play instantly as it doesn't need to be downloaded again.

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But there is little issue with receiving sounds, AFAIK, only one of my friends has trouble receiving them at all, the problem is sending the sounds in the first place.