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Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Preview is live

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista

We broke the news the beginning of this year that Yahoo! was busy preparing a complete rebuild of Messenger made exclusively for Windows Vista users. The ground up rebuild has taken quite a long time (11 months), but it's finally here.

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista is officially available as a preview download starting today. There are some important features that are missing in this build, but the significant additions might make up for the lack of features. The changes in Yahoo! Messenger include a complete change of layout, skin chooser, filter-as-you-type for easy searching, spell checker and a convenient tabbed conversation window that controls your desktop clutter. The rebuild also incorporates sidebar graphics that have the ability to show favorite contacts separated from conversation windows. Graphical elements in the new IM take Microsoft's graphic subsystem into play for vector based interfaces and enhanced emoticons. IM's can now be conveniently sent to both Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger contacts, complete with up to 2GB worth of files.

There are a few features that have been left out of this build that are scheduled for a later date. They are big ones that people do expect to have, be it a beta build or any release and include voice, webcam, chat rooms, text messaging to mobile devices, photo sharing and conferencing. To grab a copy of the new Yahoo! Messenger for Vista preview release, visit http://messenger.yahoo.com/windowsvista.php We will have more on this application as we put it through the DLS wringer.

Check out some screenshots of Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Preview in the gallery.

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Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

CiviballsI have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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