Hello again from Yuna Software. My name is Natalie, and I have both good news and sad news.  The sad news, unfortunately, is that Vanessa had to leave us for personal (health) reasons.  We hope that she will return, but at this point it looks like she’ll be gone for awhile. I’m sure you all wish her well.  I know that this may seem annoying, just as you were getting to know and connect with her.

The good news is that I’ve stepped in to replace Vanessa as Community Manager, and plan to be here for a long time!  I’m originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. As my nickname states, I like the colour green and also am concerned about ecological and green issues.  Unlike Vanessa, I don’t know how to make guacamole, but I make a mean fruit salad.  I look forward to meeting you here and helping you out as best as I can.

If 2009 was a year of changes, it seems that 2010 started as a year of disbelief. In the last 2 months, I’ve read many posts, many blog entries, many comments and many emails regarding Yuna Software. Since the change of control happened, most of you in the Messenger Plus! community groups, wondered about what was happening. As things were being restructured on Yuna Software’s side (the owner), concerns were not addressed and emails were not answered. Development of Messenger Plus! was not properly guided anymore and proper tests and translations were not performed. On behalf of the entire company, let me start by apologizing for these issues. These problems should never have happened and this post is here to put an end to it.

For those of you who didn’t see her already, Vanessa is our newest member and she works full time at Yuna Software. Her job? to keep things alive :). She’ll be talking on the forum, posting on the site, and doing everything else she can to keep things fun. Unfortunately, she quickly felt ill after being introduced but she’ll be back on her feet in no time. I’ve always wanted to organize more contests, more events around the software, etc… her help will be precious on those matters, especially once she feels more at ease among the current users. She’s also the second person you get to know from Yuna Software. Who’s the first one you may ask? nobody else but myself, Patchou.

Some of you tend to forget about it these days but I am still part of the company who owns Messenger Plus!. For the past couple of months, I had to focus on preparing the future: several members of the forum actively collaborated with me in order to create a really cool and complete specification document for Messenger Plus! 5, and I had to set-up a nice office in Montreal. Next week, we’ll receive the furniture and I’ll be able to start taking pictures of the place. You wouldn’t imagine how many things must be taken care of now that Messenger Plus! is not solely developed in my home, not far from the bedroom. For instance, in the last couple of days, I spent most of my time deciding on the computer specs that will be used by our future developers, up to the fans specific model (Nexus Real DF1209SL-3). As I couldn’t find any pre-built solution that satisfied me (I’m picky), the computers will have to be assembled one by one by hands (probably mine, except if you volunteer); this way, I’ll be sure that each computer performs as expected (Intel Core i7-860 for those interested) and conforms to my needs (silence, lots of silence).

Let’s talk about corporate matters for a minute now. Yuna Software has offices in several places in the world but the one of importance, the one you need to know and remember, is the one that’s being created in Montreal. In that office, I’ll be the one and only manager. After everything that was said recently about the company and the direction Messenger Plus! was taking, I had a long chat with some of the top level people in Yuna Software and they confirmed the following: I’m back in charge of things. That means you can ask me questions, like you did before (and I’ll take too much time to answer some of them, as I did before ;)). That also means that software development is back on track, with proper releases, documented changes in the change log (I’ve already backtracked the changes that were done in recent builds), and tests/translations organized like they used to be. Of course, some things will be different now, like business decisions, but as far as the software and what surrounds it is concerned, I’m your guy.

I’ll keep you informed when things start moving again on the development side. For now, I’m focusing on the Montreal office, a newly improved relationship with Microsoft (that can only be good right?), and all the main aspects that should make Messenger Plus! 5 a killer add-on for instant messaging software by the end of the year. I’ll soon be hiring software developers in the Montreal area too so, if you speak french, eat C++ for breakfast and are interested in joining me for the next chapter of this adventure, send me a message!

This year, count on me to do the best work possible on Messenger Plus! 5. Thanks to all the people who keep on contributing to the success of Messenger Plus!, I’m sure we’ll be able to achieve something that was well worth the wait. Thank you all.
Patchou

Summer is gone and it was time for an update. Messenger Plus! Live 4.83 brings its share of fixes and compatibility improvements for the latest version of Windows Live Messenger. If you want to keep on enjoying everything Messenger Plus! has to offer with the latest version of your software, download the update right away.

On another note, I’m glad to report this year’s contest was a smashing success and lots of people have started to post pictures of their prizes on their blogs or forums. If you haven’t done so yet, don’t hesitate to share your story with us :-). In the meantime, rest assured that major updates for Messenger Plus! are still being prepared. As anything worthwhile, it requires a lot of time and patience so for now, just enjoy Halloween!

Congratulations to all the winners! This summer’s contest is now over and it’s finally more than 780 lucky users who will receive a prize this year. Free prizes with a free add-on: beautiful life isn’t it? If you’re in the list, expect to get your prize by the end of September (international shipping can take a long time). We’ll be glad to see you post pictures of your prize on the forum for everyone else to see.

Below are the heat maps and winners lists for the last 2 weeks. If you’re wondering what those vertical lines are for the third week, it’s just that more people than usual tried to cheat this week for some reason :-). Don’t worry, none of them will get anything, as I mentioned before, I personally check all the winning entries, there’s just no point spending time on the creation of cheating scripts (apart for the sport, of course). We hope you had a good time playing the contest, stay tuned for more good news this autumn, big things are coming.

Contest 2009 – Week 3   Contest 2009 – Week 4