Shoutbox

Sent this mail just now.

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Hey Patchou,

I thought when you ask for feedback and promise to read it,...

Back on April 1, 2007, I had been searching for a Messenger add-on to add the boss-key feature. When I googled around a bit, I found Messenger Plus! and decided to install it to see what else it'd offer. Back then, I was using Messenger 8.1 (later on, I became part of the Messenger 8.5 beta and used that one).

I was amazed about the overwhelming amount of features that Plus! (4.23, back then) added to Messenger. For some months, I was happy with using it, and that was it. In July 2007, I created an account at the Forums. At that time, I was searching for a script showing my Messenger status on the web. All I found was the Web2Live alpha (private then) - you probably know the outcome: I started my own script WLMStatus.

After again some months, my friend Bram Lancsweert talked to me about a mail from you looking for skinners. That's how I came into being a tester and also won a prize with my skin 'Apple Live Messenger' (you remember the Amazon vouchers?).

In the 1.5 years of being a tester, I started gathering all ideas that your users have, for new and enhanced functions of Messenger Plus! Live, collecting them into handy overviews in sticky forum threads.

However, I do feel that up to now, you were not that much interested in adding the features that your users and testers would like to see in Plus! - sometimes not even interested at all, to be honest. I'm sorry if I am a bit too honest here, but that is what I felt like. Every time when I look at the list of 100 and more items, all of them suggested by users, many of them I find interesting and having potential, some of them possibly getting complicated to program, some few of them probably not possible, very few you promised to add, yet *none* of them implemented in the software, I start worrying and wondering if you care about them, if you ever read it, if you even thought about adding at least some of the suggestions.

With Windows Live Wave 4, Microsoft is going to lower the boundaries of the different Web services and Essentials desktop applications. I think Messenger Plus! should get part of this cloud (in a different sense than the word is used nowadays). Integration is the magic word in this case.

Looking to the future of Messenger Plus! and Messenger itself, I feel just like you: there is the need of doing more, much more with this software. I won't send you a list with interesting features; I am sure you have received and will receive lots of messages about these. I just want to make you feel the importance of doing something valuable with the - sometimes raw - input that your users, and testers, give you. You know where to find the suggestion lists: just go through them in a silent hour and you will find tons of great inspirations for adding features that your users appreciate and want.

Many thanks that you didn't stop your dedicated Messenger Plus! work in all the past 8 years!