Archive for June, 2008

The chosen cats !

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Hi Everybody,

After reviewing your selection from the cat lovers post, we have chosen the following cats:

Going over the selection I’ve noticed that the last one (#2857520) looks very familiar, and for a good reason he is…  He’s already in our product.   The rest of them are all new, so they will all be added to our menus.

Since we update every two weeks and prepare our new content updates in advance, the above will get inside the menus in a few weeks.

I’d like to thank all participants again for the help !

Roy

YouTube gadget on SweetIM toolbar for IE

Friday, June 27th, 2008

We had a meeting this week about our toolbar for Internet Explorer (and as you know - soon we’ll have one for FireFox as well).    The objective was finding additional features to offer to our users on the toolbar.

I claimed that there’s much more we can offer than what we offer today.

One of the features brought up for discussion was a YouTube Gadget.  And to be honest this was the feature I liked most and this is why I’m telling you about it.  Your responses will help us and encourage us to implement or not to implement this feature.

The idea is very simple: with a click of a button on your toolbar, you’ll see a menu where you’ll be able to view youtube videos from several categories (New videos, Most viewed, etc…), In addition - you’ll be able to search for videos, and also once you find a cool video - you’ll be able to easily send it to your friends over email…

click on the image below to see it full size:

I’d like your honest opinion here -

Will you use such a feature ?

Are you using youtube at all ?

Any additional comments will gladly be accepted.

Thanks,

Roy

It’s Doggy time ! !

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

Well I guess you’re not surprised reading this post after the comments of this one: http://www.sweetimblog.com/?p=35 .

You folks didn’t leave me much choice, but to let you help us pick some cute doggies for our product.

Follow the same rules as the ones in the cats post and use the following link to choose from:

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&lightboxID=1202

   

Roy

Happy Birthday ! ! !

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

Birthdays are always fun, especially for those who work in SweetIM !

We have this tradition in the office where we celebrate ppl’s birthdays by having this big lunch all together. The ones with the birthday are responsible for the food and beverages.    Today 5 of us have celebrated their birthday (well they don’t all have the same birth date but they all have their birthday this month).

Anyway as you can see we had tons of fantastic food for lunch today (which made me very sleepy afterwards), and personally I can’t wait for the next birthday to come !

Leah, Karen, Eva, Slava, Daniel and Ben:

Roy

There’s first time for everything: called in sick today

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

I’ve been working on SweetIM for over 3 years now, and to be honest - never thought I’ll need to call in sick.  But I guess there’s first time for everything - I woke up this morning with high-fever and one big head ache and actually considered going to work today (but decided not to do so after failing to get out of bed…)

Fortunately I’m feeling better now and probably be fine by tomorrow morning.

Days like this make me appreciate technology and remind me not to take for granted things like wi-fi and a laptop, which enable me to work (and to write this post) from my own bed at home.

Roy

Messenger Plus! support

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Many of you have been asking us lately when will SweetIM fully support Messenger Plus!
For those of you who weren’t aware of this - It’s been quite a while since we’ve encountered some integration bugs with Messenger Plus!. In some of the cases either SweetIM or Messenger Plus! actually disappears.

To be honest it’s been frustrating for us to stay in this situation, and even more frustrating for me personally as a Plus! user.

Fortunately, together with Messenger Plus!, we’ve succeeded to find a solution that will enable both applications to work along. In fact, our developers have already started working on this solution.

That being said, it will still take us some time to release it. We’re planning to release this fix along with the SweetIM version that will be released during this September-October…

Believe me, we wish we could release it earlier, but we just have so many tasks and so few of us to handle all the work.

Your patience is appreciated.

Roy

Win a SweetFreebie !

Friday, June 20th, 2008

From time to time I am given the opportunity (and budget) to spend money on some cool presents for our users…  This time, believe it or not, instead of spoiling myself with new shoes, I chose to spend it on you !

I’d like you to tell us all the following:

From each content type (emoticons, winks, soundFX, etc…) , what is your favorite SweetIM content item ?

To make it easy, write your answer in the following format:

1. Emoticons: Love category, first row, second item - beating heart.

2. Winks: Insults category, second row, first item - baby poo.

The first 5 people to send a comment with their answer will win a very cool prize !

Make sure you use your real email address when writing the comment so we’ll be able to contact you and send you your prize.

That’s our way of saying “Thank You!” for helping us !

Roy

Meet the “blinkies”

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

They’re round, they’re black, they’re one-eyed, and they’re
super-cool ! 

Meet the “blinkies” (or at least that’s how I call them) :

          

 

    

 

 

 

 

Very soon, in your SweetIM menu…

 

Jagosh,

Creative team. 

Good News and Bad News - FireFox

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Hi Everybody,

As you can see I’ve got some good news and bad news.

I’ll start with the bad news:

I don’t have the time for writing a blog-post today ! 

I’m sure you’ll understand me, because what’s been keeping us very busy today (and the next few days) is the QA of our new version for FireFox !  

Which takes me to the good news:

SweetIM will be compatible with FireFox soon !  This means you’ll be able to use all of our cool emoticons for your webmail, social networks, blogs (like this one !), forums, etc… with your FireFox.

I can’t say exactly when it is scheduled to be releases yet, cause it still has way too many bugs, but I promise to keep you posted .

hmmm… looks like I’ve written a blog post after all…     

 

Roy

Cat lovers - this one’s for you !

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Nikki, Sofia and all other cat lovers, this one’s for you:

After repeated requests (over IM and here in the blog) from you for some more cat content I’ve asked our creative folks to prepare new cat stuff !  I can fluff it in many nice ways, but the reality is that unfortunately all our designers are dog guys and are not willing to create new cats… it is a shame but it is the reality.

BUT - this doesn’t mean you won’t have new cats ! 

With your help we can do it.  I need you to help me decide what millions of users will see…

I’ll explain:

When it comes to our display pictures category, we sometimes purchase images from stock-photos websites (i.e. “gettyimages”, “istockphoto”, etc…) and release them in SweetIM.

In the following link you’ll find tons of cat-photos:

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&lightboxID=32037

We want each one of you to choose your favorite photos (up to 10) out of this gallery, and out of all selected photos we promise to purchase at least 10 and release them for all of our users to enjoy.

Each image has a number which is located below it.  To make things easy, just post a comment here with the numbers representing your favorite photos ! 

Keep in mind that display pictures are rather small on all instant messenger platforms, so you should pick up the ones that also look good on a small size.

  

Roy