We just pushed a new release (Build 49, r20700) to all non-alpha users.  This release is a small patch, which adds support for a change in the MySpace protocol that broke newsfeeds.  This will be fixed for alpha users in the next alpha release we do.

If you experience any bugs please use “Help > Send Bug Report” in the main menu to submit a diagnostic log or email us at bugs@digsby.com. If you have any suggestions, please email us at features@digsby.com.

As always, thank you for all the feedback and enjoy the new build. Remember to invite your friends to use Digsby via Email or Facebook.

We recently sponsored a LAN party hosted by the RIT Electronic Gaming Society. Here are a few pictures from the event and you can see the entire gallery here.

We just pushed an update to alpha testers (Build 48, r20416 r20432 r20444 r20453 r20559) which introduces tons of bug fixes and enhancements. As always, you can read the entire list of new features, bug fixes, and enhancements on our Change Log. Notable changes include:

• Added a “Local Mode” which saves all account info on your machine and uses that if Digsby is unable to connect to our servers to synchronize preferences.  Next time Digsby is able to log in, everything is synchronized. Please let us know if you run into any issues with this feature.
• Fixed several major memory leaks in Digsby and currently hunting down the remaining ones.
• Added support for the new Hotmail protocol.
• Yahoo Protocol now uses their load balancers for more reliable login.

If you would like to become an alpha tester and get new releases before everyone else, download this file and place it in the main program folder. Keep in mind that as an alpha tester you may get a release with a few bugs every now and then.  We are looking for people who are proactive in reporting these issues so we can fix them before builds go out to all users.

As always, thank you for all the feedback and enjoy the new build. If you experience any bugs please email us at bugs@digsby.com or use “Help > Send Bug Report” in the main menu to submit a diagnostic log. If you have any suggestions, please email us at features@digsby.com.

Update 1 (12:00pm EST, 2/17/2009): We are working on fixing a few bugs that have been reported in this alpha and will push out a release shortly.  If you have contacts showing up as duplicates, are having trouble connecting via proxy to some services, or can’t log in to ICQ and are in Germany, those issues will be fixed in a patch shortly.

Update 2 (12:30pm EST 2/17/2009): We just pushed out a patch fixing the above issues.  If you were having proxy issues you may need to reinstall since auto-update could fail for you.

Update 3 (7:00pm EST 2/17/2009): We just pushed out another small patch fixing two bugs that were reported.  One caused your accounts to not show on login in rare cases and another caused the “Typing” notification to stay at the top of the IM window even after someone stopped typing.

Update 4 (10:00am EST 2/18/2009): One more patch fixing a bug with the IM window.  Please let us know if there are any remaining newly introduced issues with this alpha.

Update 5  (11:00am EST 2/20/2009): Another small patch fixing a couple remaining IM window bugs and a bug with messaging WLM buddies after they go idle. Also, Yahoo Protocol now uses their load balancers for more reliable login.

We just pushed a new release (Build 47, r20382) to all non-alpha users.  This release is a small patch, which adds support for the new Hotmail.  Another release will go out later today to ALPHA testers with these fixes.

If you experience any bugs please use “Help > Send Bug Report” in the main menu to submit a diagnostic log or email us at bugs@digsby.com. If you have any suggestions, please email us at features@digsby.com.

As always, thank you for all the feedback and enjoy the new build. Remember to invite your friends to use Digsby via Email or Facebook.

Update: The alpha release will go out tomorrow morning.

The Rochester Twestival is today at 5pm.  We hope to see you there!  Twestivals are being hosted in over 175 cities worldwide today to bring Twitter users together and raise money for charity:water, a nonprofit organization that helps bring clean water to people in developing nations.

You can learn more Rochester Twestival here.

We are having server-side issues that brought down the service.  We are working on the problem now and will be back up shortly.  If you want to be notified when we come back online, send an email to bugs@digsby.com.

After a year of almost perfect uptime, this is the second outage in the last week.  This is completely unacceptable and we will make sure this does not become a regular occurrence!

Update 1 (2:00pm 2/9/2009): We are working to restore the databases now so we can bring the servers back online.  Part of the team is meeting right now to discuss the implementation of “local mode” so the client is not dependent on servers.

Update 2 (3:30pm EST 2/9/2009): We have the primary database online and are synchronizing across nodes.  We hope to be back online within about an hour.

Update 3 (4:30pm EST 2/9/2009): The synchronization is about 50% done so it looke like it may be another hour.  We’ll post an update here as soon as we are online.

Update 4 (6:30pm EST 2/9/2009): We’re back!

We are having electricity issues that brought down the servers.  The issue is being worked on and we’ll be back online ASAP.

Update 1 (8:00am 2/2/2009): Everything is back online and just in time! An article about Digsby just made the front page of Digg.  LifeHacker featured us as one of the top five system tray applications.  Check out the article and vote for us!

Update 2 (9:00am 2/2/2009): Power is down again for the building and traffic lights in the immediate area. The power company has been notified and they are working to fix the issue as quickly as possible.  The power backup was able to keep things online for a periood of time but it couldn’t handle such a long outage.

Update 3  (10:30am 2/2/2009): Everything is back online and hopefully for good this time.  We’ll put up  a blog post soon explaining what happened and what will be done to prevent it from ever happening again. We apologize for the short downtime everyone experienced.