In a post on the Skype Big Blog today, Microsoft says that it will start to upgrade Messenger to Skype on Windows desktop starting April 8. The extension gives the stragglers a little more time to make their peace with the dying service. The upgrade process will take a few weeks so those using non-English versions will have a few more weeks. The company expects to finish the upgrades on April 30 withe the Brazilian Portugese client being upgraded last.

For those still concerned about the move, Microsoft offers a reason not to be. All the same features you enjoyed in Windows Live Messenger will be in Skype upon your arrival. You will also get the added benefit of many Skype features that were not in Messenger, including:

OK, so that sounds pretty good. You want to migrate to Skype now, but you just don’t know how. Microsoft has cooked up this easy to follow tutorial on how to migrate your Messenger account to Skype. Check it out.

Microsoft is sure to issue more warnings as we move closer to the April 8 migration date so you might as well migrate over now. It’s better than having to receive notifications in your Messenger client every day. Might as well welcome the assimilation instead of fighting it.

Starting today, you can now send voice messages from within the Facebook app.

Earlier this month, Facebook added voice messaging to its Facebook Messenger app. That was later bolstered with free VoIP calling in the U.S. and Canada from within the app.

Users now also have the ability to record and share videos from inside the app as well.

The last update to Facebook for iOS was a speed boost back in mid-December.

You can grab the updated app from the App Store right now.

Facebook has begun the U.S. rollout of VoIP calling in their Messenger app, after testing the feature for nearly two weeks in Canada. The VoIP calling in Canada came along with an update to the app that saw all users gain support for voice messaging (which works a lot like Facebook voicemail). Facebook said that the VoIP calling would come to U.S. users if everything went over well, and apparently that’s happened.

Sorry, Android users. It’s currently only a Messenger for iOS thing.

To receive the VoIP calling functionality, simply open up your app. If the feature has been rolled out to you, you should see a “Free Call” button once you tap the “i” icon on the top right of open message threads. You don’t have to download an update.

It is a “free” call, if you are using Wi-Fi. But the Facebook Messenger voice calling with also use cellular data when no Wi-Fi is present, so it will eat up your current data plan a bit.

Free VoIP calling isn’t anything new, but it is pretty big news when it lands on a Facebook app. Of course, the benefits of using Facebook Messenger to make voice calls are that it’s free with Wi-Fi and can be used anytime an internet connection is present – even if you’re experiencing a vortex or terrible cell reception.

This is all part of a push that Facebook is making to better assert itself into the world of mobile communications. Last month, Facebook began allowing users to use Facebook Messanger for Android by simply signing up with a phone number with no Facebook account required. They also unveiled a new app called “Poke,” which allows users to send convert video, photo, or text messages that self-destruct after a given period of time. Now, their Messenger app is a bigger player in the game with voice messaging and voice calling.

[via The Verge]

NASA announced today that new measurements from its Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft provide “compelling support” for the water ice theory. The space craft measured the excess hydrogen at Mercury’s north pole, the reflectance of Mercury’s polar deposits, and provided detailed models of the surface temperatures, as well as surface temperatures in the planet’s north polar regions. The data has been published today in the journal Science, through the ScienceXpress online pre-publication service.

“For more than 20 years, the jury has been deliberating whether the planet closest to the sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently shadowed polar regions,” said Sean Solomon, MESSENGER principal investigator and director of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “MESSENGER now has supplied a unanimous affirmative verdict.”

The image above highlights the shadowed areas of Mercury’s north polar region taken by MESSENGER (in red) and Earth-based radar (in yellow).

“The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury’s polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick,” said David Lawrence, lead author of one of three papers and a MESSENGER participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). “We estimate from our neutron measurements the water ice lies beneath a layer that has much less hydrogen. The surface layer is between 10 and 20 centimeters [4-8 inches] thick,”

Though Mercury’s (short) distance from the sun make it seem an unlikely place to find ice, the planet’s rotational axis tilts less than one degree. This means there are pockets of the planet’s surface that are never hit by sunlight. The idea that these pockets might hold ice is decades old, and the hypothesis came to prominence in 1991 when the Arecibo radio telescope detected radar-bright patches at Mercury’s poles.

(Image courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory)

Earlier this month, Facebook improved the Android SDK.

Now, with a new Android update, Facebook has improved its Messenger app with a new design making it easier to quickly see who’s available, changing the design of the conversation flow, and enabling users to text contacts directly from Messenger (the update will come to iOS soon, the company says). Here’s what it looks like:

The messaging changes also apply to the regular Facebook For Android app. Here’s what’s new in that:

• New button in upper right of News Feed quickly shows who’s available to message
• New design for conversations in Messages
• When sending messages, see who’s active so you and your friends know how soon to expect a reply
• Improvements to make the app more secure and reliable, including bug fixes for errors during multi-photo selections, device restarts, and push notifications

The company is also reportedly testing a photo sync feature on Android, which would work similar to the Google+ Instant Upload feature. If (most likely when) this becomes an actual feature, Facebook users that haven’t dabbled with the Google+ counterpart will probably love it (provided the privacy settings are handled right). Instant Upload was one of the best features of Google+ from the beginning, in my opinion.

Facebook Messenger for Android 2.0 and Android 1.9.10 will be available in the Google Play store today. The new version of the Facebook for Android app also hits Google Play today.

I’ve stayed out of the Microsoft attempted merger of Yahoo so far. But EVERYONE seems to be talking about it from all sorts of angles.

Me? I take the user’s point of view and that’s one I haven’t seen discussed much yet.

Will Yahoo moving to Microsoft be a good thing for users? Let’s take a tour.

Yahoo Messenger users and MSN Messenger users. Wash to bad things for Yahoo’s messenger. They already work together and I doubt that having two huge teams with two huge user bases of hundreds of millions of people trying to work together will bring much new. At worst case the Yahoo team will leave and so Yahoo’s Messenger will stop seeing new features.

Yahoo Mail and Hotmail users. Wash to bad things for Yahoo’s Mail. Same as with the messenger side of things. Eventually I can see Yahoo’s Mail get frozen and so bugs and things won’t get fixed on Yahoo’s side and I can see pressure (advertising, etc) to pull people off of Yahoo and put them on Hotmail or whatever they are calling it now (Microsoft Windows Live Mail).

Flickr. The users of Flickr are very scared of what a Microsoft purchase might mean. But here Microsoft has no significant player, so they’ll probably try to keep the development team intact. Plus, there are a lot of smart people at Microsoft who are into photography (Ansel Adams’ son Michael was at Microsoft Researcher Curtis Wong’s wedding, for instance) So, good things could happen here for Flickr’s users.

Delicious? No real Microsoft competitor and tons of Microsofties love Delicious, so good things ahead, just like Flickr.

Yahoo Maps and Live Maps? I like Microsoft’s Maps better, but there’s some tricks that Yahoo does better. So, if these teams get along we’d probably see an improved version of both services, although I doubt they’d remain separate code bases.

Yahoo Search and Microsoft Live Search? Microsoft is already gaining on relevancy, so that tells me there are still a few smart people at Microsoft working on search. They just don’t have a brand name worth s**t. So, Yahoo’s brand name on top of Microsoft’s search will help Microsoft out a lot. I doubt that we’ll see a Google killer out of the joining of these two companies, though. The sales teams will be joined and will prove profitable for Microsoft. For users, though? I doubt we’ll see anything for years in terms of dramatically better search.

Developer tools and such? Microsoft isn’t threatened by anything Yahoo is doing, although the Pipes and Fire Eagle and other Yahoo teams will probably love working at Microsoft. For users? Join those tools into Ray Ozzie’s new Mesh and we could see some cool new stuff.

Portals? Yahoo’s has more users, more respect, and more features. I don’t see anything major for users either way there.

Finance and Personals sites? I doubt users will see much change there.

So, for users, there’s some negatives, and some positives.

How do you see the Yahoo/Microsoft merger affecting users?

As to Microsoft employee morale? That’ll end up a positive in this deal. After all, Microsoft employees will see their stock go up, not down. That drives morale more than anything.

For board members? Marc Andreessen covers that.

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Being that I’m traveling a lot now for work it becomes readily apparent when I’m in the air that it’d be nice to be able to connect to the web in order to get work done and communicate with colleagues, friends, and family.

However, in a weird way I also treasure those few hours of internet-free time to read documents or get stuff done that is harder to focus on with connectivity distractions. It’s also a good time to just relax on occasion by reading a book or watching a movie. I guess as connectivity hits the friendly skies it will just be another place I’ll have to learn to block out distractions to relax or be extremely productive.

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The Yahoo Messenger blog noted this preview release sports an entirely new interface. This draws from the Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft’s graphics subsystem in use with Vista.

The user interface and core functionality represent the areas of focus Yahoo centered on in building the client. Tab organization, enhanced emoticons, and the ability to skin individual IM windows list among the features.

As with other versions of Yahoo Messenger, this client can IM Windows Live Messenger clients. People can drag and drop contacts from Yahoo Messenger to the Windows Sidebar gadget and track them from there.

Plenty of work remains for Yahoo to do with the Vista version of Messenger. 64-bit support is on the list of future developments, along with almost every multimedia and messaging feature that isn’t a direct IM to another IM client.

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While we don’t know anything about features, or even if it’ll be named Windows Live Messenger or MSN Messenger (presumably the new name, though), at least Mac fans are getting a new version.

Not only that, but work is already going on for Messenger 7, which will be the first Mac version with audio/video capabilities.

(via Digg)

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