Darryl.net

Ok, so I haven’t posted here in some time. Here’s what we’ve been working on that’s kept me so busy these last few months: http://web.im/ - or, officially, http://webmessenger.yahoo.com/ (or, Yahoo! Messenger for the Web).

“It’s like travel size toiletries with everything that you love about the Yahoo messenger application in a lighter size.” Ok, so that’s a fun quote - but it is actually designed not to have everything - only what you need while you are away from your prized personal PC.

In fact, one interesting thing I [re]learned is that people only really need about 1/10th of what is normally shipped with any given product. The first thing we did when we started was to decide what it would not have. It would not allow you to set your image, change your stealth settings, pull up your web cam, share photos, transfer files, load plug-ins, change themes, etc. etc. You have an installable client that can do that. It would solve one user case: I cannot or do not want to install the client (perhaps I’m on the road, or at work, or in a cafe). By keeping scope limited, we were able to build it from the ground up in just a few months (thanks, in part, to our crack team - and, in the other part, to Adobe’s cool new tools).

Find out more about Yahoo! Messenger for the Web, and make sure to watch the embarassing video that I narrated. Here’s some of the early press: TechCrunch, Reuters, CNET, and this glowing blogger.