14 DAY TRIAL // The Microsoft MIX conference in Las Vegas ending today has welcomed among others the Yahoo! Messenger for Vista team, that will hold a couple of presentations and, just like last year, talk about the integration of Yahoo! Mess with Windows Vista. The difference is that unlike last year, when the IM service had the client in the works, now it's out into the wild and an actual preview and demonstration are more than just theory on a blackboard / screen.
Josh Jacobson, Senior Product Manager of Yahoo! Messenger for Vista, has allowed users to take a sneak peek at the new features to be introduced with the next Beta release. The main item of focus is voice, and the option to make free PC to PC calls and low cost PC to Phone calls. That's not new, but the visualization modes that will come together with this in a package deal are. They'll be leveraging the WPF 3D integration, and Jacobson says that "even if you're not having a very interesting phone conversation, we guarantee you'll be mesmerized by the awesome effects." You can see on the left an exemplification of one of the effects, posted on the Official Yahoo! Messenger blog.
Free SMS sending will also be included with the next release. Stop that slow typing on your phone for that 1,000 character message, you'll be able to do it directly from the Yahoo! Messenger for Vista client! Based on feedback, another option to be added for certain is the Yahoo! Mail alert system that was nowhere to be found in the original release.
Unfortunately, there isn't a date available for the next Beta version to be rolled out, Jacobson wrote, so all the above are just chimeras to dream of. I'm not using Vista myself, but if all of the above indeed find their way into the release, I'm seriously considering switching to it just for them.