Trillian Astra Build 80 was released back on the 13th. The changelog claims to have over 100 entries, though most of what’s noted in the blog post relates to various Yahoo Messenger improvements. I just hope one of those 100 items means that it will no longer crash when I try to add a friend. That’s probably the most annoying thing ever. 
In the past few weeks there has been a lot more news about the whole attempt from Microsoft to buy Yahoo. People have left, everyone and their brother has voiced their opinion on the deal, and others are even suing Yahoo for turning down the deal.
There has been so much going on, that I’m tired of hearing about it. So, this is the last I’ll be posting about it until something final happens. They’ll be plenty of other blogs and news sites covering every aspect of Microhoo.
It’s been a busy week for me, and there’s been a lot of Yahoo news going on. Rather than post about everything separately, I’ll throw it all into once nice post that way I can get on to bed (I told you The Invasion bored me!).
For whatever reason, Microsoft thought it’d be a good idea to make a bid to take over Yahoo. No one that I knew expected any government to accept the deal, and thankfully yesterday Yahoo officially rejected Microsoft. This announcement came after the rumor surfaced that Yahoo may be looking to merge into Time Warner’s fledgling AOL division. AOL-Time Warner-Yahoo? Suddenly, I liked the whole Microsoft idea better.
Not long after Yahoo dissed the company Gate’s built, Microsoft issued a press release stating that it was unfortunate that Yahoo decided to turn down an offer that would create a more effective company. I guess Microsoft’s idea of being effective is releasing crap software well past the original release date (Vista anyone?). Now it looks like Microsoft has hired a proxy firm in an attempt for a hostile takeover.
Meanwhile, Yahoo has begun to layoff some 1,000 employees. Among those out the door is Salim Ismail, who has lead Yahoo Brickhouse since early 2007. According to TechCrunch, Salim left voluntary. He’ll most likely create a small startup and get bought up by Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. Any bets?
With all the take over talks, merger proposals, and the layoffs, you’d think that’d be enough for Yahoo. Nope, today they acquired Maven Networks for $160 million.
And that’s pretty much the gist of the Microsoft-Yahoo saga that’s gone on for the past few days. Oh yeah, Yahoo also had a couple software releases, but who cares about those right now.
The biggest news to come out yesterday is that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo. Microsoft wants Yahoo so bad, they’ve offered $44.6 Billion which is about #31 per share. No doubt, this could be good news for Yahoo which is already set to lay off about 1000 employees.
I find it amazing that Microsoft actually made this bid. Even if the shareholders for the companies agree to this, I cannot see anyway that the US and EU anti-trust lawyers would allow this. Huge company acquiring another huge company. Yeah, that has anti-trust written all over it. I’d expect Google to voice concerns.
Here are some additional articles that cover the news: Continue reading »
Another week, another build. This week, build 70 brings over 100 bug fixes and also introduces MSN Voice Calls. As with the Yahoo voice calls that was added in build 68, you might experience some call lag.
I don’t know if anyone else experienced it or not, but that last build seamed like it had a heck of a memory leak in it.
We have a new Trillian Astra build this week, and thankfully this one will auto update. Build 68 features a full revamped to the [Yahoo] Voice Call system, and improved chat views. These features should be available in both the Cobalt and Cordonata skins. For more information on the changes, check out the developers blog.
If I had a guess, from the way things sound we may have one or two more “clean up” builds before they release the first beta.
I was looking at my site’s stats for the past year via Google Analytics, and found some interesting stats. Well, at least they were interesting to me, you might not care one bit about them. :p According to the data reported:
An update to Trillian (not the Astra) has been released that addresses some issues with Yahoo logins. You should be able to auto update otherwise you can download the update here.
What this build was suppose to fix was actually fixed server side by Yahoo, however Cerulean Studios still recommends updating to this build.
I just noticed that I had a ton of invites for Pownce, so if ya would like a Pownce invite leave me your email and I’ll throw one your way. There are pretty easy to come by now.
I’ve also got invites for a number of other services… Yahoo Mash, GrandCentral, and Jaiku are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Let me know if you want something else, chances are I’ll have and invite or know where you can find one.
Google has announced plans to offer even more storage to GMail users. How much more? Well, as they put it infinity+1. That was a bit of a stretch though, because if you ever payed attention to the space counter you might have noticed that it increased at a very, very small rate. No more! Google has dramatically sped up the rate at which your account space is increased.
Just how fast have they increased the counter? According to Googlified users will see 4.2GB by Tuesday (10/23/07), 6GB by January 4th 2008, and 2.70266701 × 1072 TB by January 2nd 3456. It’s hard for me to see a need for so much space. Even with 5 different accounts ending up in the same GMail inbox, I’ve only used around 300MB. I guess I’m just doing it wrong.
Of course, Google fails when compared to Yahoo Mail which offers users an unlimited amount of space. Again, why? Though, for those of you that have somehow managed to max out your GMail, Google does offer paid increases, which range from 10GB for $20/year all the way up to 400GB for $500/year. Ouch!
I do wish that Google would offer an increased amount of storage (free) for Picasa Web. I really don’t understand why I have ~4GB for email and only 1GB for images.
