Web Worker Daily

It’s been a busy few weeks for the team at online meeting service Yuuguu, with the announcement of Linux and Flash clients as well as support for Google Talk users.

Earlier today the company rounded out its ‘Yuuguu Inside’ strategy by extending its integration of Google Talk buddies to users from AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo’s instant messaging networks, bringing cross-platform and cross-network support to the company’s ‘Yuuniverse’.

With a reach extending into hundreds of millions now, its easier than ever for users of the service to invite participants to a Yuuguu session, though it remains to be seen if removing previous barriers actually makes a difference in adoption of screensharing over face-to-face meetings.

Regardless, Yuuguu remains a useful free tool for web workers and one that now extends a little further.

UPDATE: Yuuguu CEO Anish Kapoor assures me that a bug in the acceptance of .Mac-based AIM screennames will shortly be resolved.

A few days ago Microsoft released a beta for Office Outlook Connector 12.1; essentially a plugin for Microsoft’s near-ubiquitous email client that helps address some of the issues we’ve discussed previously at Web Worker Daily including Jailbreaking Hotmail and Exchange-ing Microsoft for Google.

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector provides Outlook users with the capability of synchronizing messages, calendars and contacts with Hotmail and Office Live Mail accounts, effectively providing offline access for those web-based services – and perhaps more importantly, the ability to make that data portable and transferable to other services, such as Gmail.

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Hot on the heels of Windows XP SP3, Microsoft released an additional treat today, for Mac owners only, as the latest release of Microsoft Messenger for Mac (version 7) escaped into the wild.

Version 6 brought the Aqua look and feel to Microsoft’s client amongst other features, so what’s new in 7?

• A redesigned buddy list with a search-as-you-type box for locating contacts in large buddy lists.
• Aping iChat with integration of Bonjour contacts drawn from the user’s local network.
• Users can apply nicknames to their buddies, particularly useful for contacts who frequently (and irritatingly) change their screennames!

Notably for users connecting via a corporate Office Communication Server, Bonjour and searchable buddy-lists also extend to enterprise IM networks.

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Use Skype IM within Pidgin

For those of us who use instant messaging to conduct our day-to-day business, we know the frustrations of having multiple friends spread throughout all the major IM platforms including Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, and Skype. Pidgin is a freeware multi-protocol IM product that allows access to all your contacts from Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, and many more systems. However, Skype however was always closed off.

Not any longer, thanks to the Skype API and the Skype API Plugin for Pidgin. Using this free plugin, you can instant message back and forth with your Skype contacts within Pidgin. At this point, it isn’t possible to do voice calling from Pidgin. However every Skype contact is brought into Pidgin for easy access. Because Pidgin is cross-platform, this functionality is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.