To kick off the summer, we just pushed an update to alpha testers (Build 79, r27316 r27320 r27332 r27338 r27405) which includes a several significant changes along with some lingering bug fixes and enhancements.  As always, you can read the entire list of enhancements on our Change Log. Notable changes include:

• Spell Check: We expanded spell check to support over 50 languages instead of just English. The next phase of this project will include translating the actual Digsby client into different languages.
• Facebook Chat: Our Facebook Chat implementation will now connect to a new set of Facebook XMPP servers that should be much more stable than the HTTP servers we currently connect to. These servers also report your entire buddy list instead of just online buddies.
• Facebook Login: We switched Facebook Newsfeed and Facebook Chat login over to OAuth 2.0, which is a much more streamlined method for requesting permissions that Facebook announced at their last F8 conference.
• Twitter Achievements: We added achievements to Twitter (previously only on Facebook and MySpace). You will be asked if you would like to enable or disable this functionality and you can turn it on/off by editing your Twitter account in Preferences.
• Gtalk disconnect: We fixed a major bug in Google Talk that caused it to constantly disconnect if you have an iTeleport user on your buddy list.

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

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.

Update 1 (6/2/2010 4:30pm EST): We just pushed out a small patch fixing a Hotmail bug bringing the build number to 27320.

Update 2 (6/2/2010 6:00pm EST): One more patch fixing a loop in the auto-update sequence and typos in a few spell check language names. The new build number is 27332.

Update 4 (6/3/2010 4:00pm EST): The fix for Gtalk disconnects didn’t fix the issue.  This patch should do the trick.  The new build number is 27338.

Update 5 (6/10/2010 1:15pm EST): We pushed out a patch fixing the remaining known issues with this alpha.  Please let us know if there are any other bugs so we can push this release live to all users.  The new build number is 27405.  Changes include:

• Fixed a bug that caused some Yahoo Mail accounts to fail to log in due to a protocol change on their end
• Ignore Facebook invite alerts that are erroneous by checking to see if the event actually exists
• Twitter now authenticates using xAuth
• Fixed a bug with Facebook Chat that caused all buddies to appear offline if you try logging in as invisible
• Fixed a bug that caused Facebook Chat to get stuck in “Connecting…” instead of failing if your network connection dies while logged in
• Fixed a bug that caused Facebook Chat to fail to connect if the first port attempted failed but the second one worked
• If the Facebook Chat servers can’t be reached, go to a “Failed to Connect” state instead of popping up the login page
• If windows does not PATH set, fall back to a default so Digsby can launch
• Minor Yahoo Protocol upgrades

We just pushed a update (Build 78, r27087 r27150 r27209 r27225) which primarily includes fixes for bugs introduced in the last major release along with a fix for a protocol change in Twitter that took place yesterday.  As always, you can read the entire list of enhancements on our Change Log. Notable changes include:

• Fixed a bug that caused Twitter login to fail due to protocol changes
• Fixed a bug that caused newly added MySpace accounts to fail to log in

If you run into any bugs please use “Help > Send Bug Report” in the main menu to submit a diagnostic log or email us at bugs@digsby.com.  We’ll keep pushing to make Digsby even better and greatly appreciate your help in spreading the word!

Update 1 (4/9/2010): We just pushed out a small patch which includes fixes for a few protocol changes.  This brings the new release number to 27150:

• Setting status on Facebook now sets your status again instead of just posting a story to your wall
• Fixed a bug that caused Facebook login to fail with a cross-domain error for Facebook
• Fixed a bug that caused Yahoo file transfer requests to not show when trying to send a file

Update 2 (4/16/2010): We just pushed a small patch to ALPHA testers which fixes a few more protocol changes.  Once we know that this release is stable, it will go out to all users.  The release number is 27186.

• Fixed a bug that caused Facebook login to fail with an authentication error for some users
• Fixed a bug that caused comments to show incorrectly for MySpace

Update 3 (4/21/2010): We just pushed another small patch to ALPHA testers which fixes one more protocol change with Facebook login that we’ve been seeing some bug reports about.  The release number is 27193.  If you are an alpha tester, please submit a bug report if you still get “Connection Failed” issues with Facebook after getting the update.

Update 4 (4/21/2010): A big thank you to our wonderful alpha testers.  The fixes introduced a small new bug with Facebook login that is now fixed in 27195.  Let us know if you still experience issues so we can get this out to all users if it’s solid.

Update 5 (4/22/2010): It seems that every social network we support decided to change their protocol this week.  We just pushed out a small patch to ALPHA testers fixing a bug that caused status updates on LinkedIn to not get set.  Please let us know if any new bugs were introduced so we can get these fixes out to all users.  The new release number is 27209.

Update 6 (4/23/2010): We just pushed 27209 to all users, which incorporates all of the above protocol fixes.

Update 7 (5/15/2010): We just pushed out a small patch (r27225) which fixes a login issue with Hotmail due to a protocol change.

We just pushed a small update to alpha testers (Build 78, r27076 r27087) which primarily includes fixes for bugs introduced in the last major release.  As always, you can read the entire list of enhancements on our Change Log.

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.

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

Update: We just pushed out a patch fixing a login issue with Twitter that was caused by a small protocol change on their end.  Please let us know if the fix works and if there are any new bugs in the alpha release so we can push this out to all users.  Click Help > About to make sure you have r27087 when testing Twitter.

We just pushed an update (Build 77,  r27050) to all users which includes tons of new features, bug fixes and enhancements.  As always, you can read the entire list of enhancements on our Change Log. Notable changes include:

• Multiformatting: You can now change formatting options like bold, italics, underline and font on a per-character basis instead of just a per-message basis
• Smarter To/From: If you have multiple accounts of the same protocol, the “From” dropdown in the IM window will not pre-select or fall back to accounts that don’t have that person on their buddy list
• Status Tagging: We’ve made it easier to spread the word about Digsby by letting you add a Digsby link to the end of your status messages.  You will be notified about this on login with instructions on how to enable/disable it via Preferences > Status
• Bit.ly: We’re transitioning our http://digs.by URL shortener to use bit.ly’s white label service.  Any digs.by URLs made from now on are interchangeable with bit.ly links that have the same ending

Now that multiformatting is live, group chat and mac/linux releases are the next major projects we’re going to tackle.  We are also going to be launching a brand new “communication product” in the near future (top secret!) so keep your ears perked for more news on that!  Let us know what you think of this release in the comments and feel free to speculate on what you think we’ll be launching.

If you run into any bugs please use “Help > Send Bug Report” in the main menu to submit a diagnostic log or email us at bugs@digsby.com.  We’ll keep pushing to make Digsby even better and greatly appreciate your help in spreading the word!

We just pushed an update to alpha testers (Build 77, r26907 r26910 r26921 r27035 r27050) which includes lots of bug fixes and enhancements.  As always, you can read the entire list of enhancements on our Change Log.  Notable changes include:

• Multiformatting: You can now change formatting options like bold, italics, underline and font on a per-character basis instead of just a per-message basis
• Smarter To/From: If you have multiple accounts of the same protocol, the “From” dropdown in the IM window will not pre-select or fall back to accounts that don’t have that person on their buddy list
• Status Tagging: We’ve made it easier to spread the word about Digsby by letting you add a Digsby link to the end of your status messages.  You will be asked on login if you want to enable or disable this feature and you can change it in Preferences > Status
• Bit.ly: We’re transitioning our http://digs.by URL shortener to use bit.ly’s white label service.  Any digs.by URLs made from now on are interchangeable with bit.ly links that have the same ending

Facebook Chat via XMPP (Jabber)

Facebook recently announced that you can now access Chat via the Jabber protocol, which is much more stable than our current implementation.  We switched Digsby over to use Jabber but haven’t pushed this out yet because it only works on the standard Jabber port which is 5222.  Many offices have firewalls that block all ports besides HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443).  Every other service we support including the current Facebook implementation has the ability to work on one of those two ports.

We hear they’re currently working on adding support for 443 or 80 but a little encouragement couldn’t hurt.  If you’ll be affected by this, please take a minute to send them a suggestion using this form and say something along the lines of:

I can’t access Facebook Chat via Jabber in Digsby unless you open port 443 or 80.  My office firewall blocks port 5222 and other ports.

Become an Alpha Tester

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.

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

Update 1 (3/11/2010 5:50pm EST): We just pushed out a small patch fixing a bug that caused MySpace login to fail when adding a new account.  This takes the build number to r26910.

Update 2 (3/11/2010 7:50pm EST): We just pushed out another a small patch fixing a bug that caused messages to not send on Facebook Chat and an error loading user settings from the Digsby server.  This takes the build number to r26921.

Update 3 (3/19 2010 2:30pm EST): We pushed out a patch fixing all the known bugs in this alpha release.  Please let us know if there are any new issues so we can iron them out before pushing this build live to all users.  The new build number is r27035 and it includes the following changes:

• Potentially fixed the black box input bug – please submit a bug report of it keeps happening
• Potentially fixed a bug that caused Twitter to get stuck in the “Connecting” state
• Fixed a bug that prevented Chinese, Japanese and a few other languages from showing correctly with the new multiformatting
• Fixed several other small bugs with multiformatting
• Fixed a bug that caused Digsby to not auto-respond when away if you had that option enabled
• Fixed a bug that prevented you from adding people to your Yahoo buddy list
• Fixed a bug that caused MySpace comments not to load
• Added lazy loading to Facebook comments for improved performance
• Replaced the picture host with imgur since pic.im seems to have fallen off the map
• Fixed a bug that may have caused your AIM profile to disappear in preferences
• Fixed a bug that may have caused your buddy list nicknames/metacontacts/ordering information to not load
• Fixed a bug with Yahoo file transfers
• Fixed typing notifications on MSN
• Fixed a bug with ICQ that caused items to get added to the wrong privacy list
• Fixed a bug that caused incoming IMs from iChat to show as HTML
• Fixed a bug that caused Minibubble2 to show formatted text incorrectly in some cases
• Reverted the scrolling fix for intellimice because it was causing scrolling issues for other mice

Update 4 (3/24/2010 1:30pm EST): We pushed out a patch fixing the last of the alpha bugs that came in over the weekend.  As long as there are no new reports this will go live to all users later this week so please let us know if we broke anything.  The new release number is r27050 and changes include:

• Potentially fixed a bug that caused font formatting to clear – please let us know if this keeps happening
• Fixed a bug that caused “auto-response” to show twice in the IM window
• Fixed a bug that caused ICQ block and invisible lists to get mixed up
• Fixed a bug that caused the “Comments” link to disappear for some Facebook news items
• Removed “Top Buddies” from jumplist as we optimize its performance

We’re very excited to announce that Digsby crossed another major milestone.  We now have over 2 million users managing more than 5 million accounts and exchanging over 25 million IMs each day using Digsby!  We think that’s pretty amazing.

We couldn’t have done it without you!  Every day we’re amazed at the quality feedback and passionate support you give us.   Thank you!  We want to take this opportunity to give back and show the world what 2 million Digsbies can do.  We’re excited to announce Digsby Donates!

What is Digsby Donates?

Digsby Donates is a small browser plugin that helps support Digsby development and allows us to make a donation on your behalf whenever you shop at one of over 1,800 participating merchants.

How does it work?

After installing the browser plugin, a small bar will appear for 10 seconds whenever you visit a participating merchant’s website letting you know that part of your purchase amount will be donated to charity.

Does it cost me anything?

Not a penny. Each of the participating merchants has an affiliate program that pays Digsby a portion of the purchase amount for encouraging you to complete the transaction.

Who gets the donation?

We couldn’t decide on a single charity so we picked 12 top rated charities to support.  Each month a different charity will get the donation from that month’s affiliate fees.  For example, this month’s donation will go to the American Red Cross to help victims in Haiti.

How can I help?

For more information check out the wiki.  Please help us make the world a better place by downloading Digsby Donates:

We’re getting reports of users not being able to log in to their MSN accounts.  This is happening in Digsby and in Windows Live Messenger so it looks like their servers are down.  We’ll keep an eye on this and let you know when it looks like service has been restored.

Update 1 (2/16/2010 1:25pm EST): Service appears to have been restored by the folks at Microsoft.

We’re excited to introduce the first new release of 2010 and this one is jam packed with lots of goodness!  We just pushed an update to all users (Build 76, r26321 r26376) which includes a large number of features, bug fixes and enhancements.  As always, you can read the entire list of enhancements on our Change Log. Notable changes include:

• New Skins: The “Windows 7″ skin now has 8 new variants by @derekerdmann.  Access them via Preferences > Skins.
• Windows 7 Support: Digsby takes advantage of jump lists for easy access to common tasks and top buddies (by log size).  We also use taskbar grouping to let you jump to conversations, see typing notifications and unread conversation counts.
• Better Popups: Social networks will no longer show a separate popup for Alerts and the titles will no longer say “Facebook Newsfeed” with a generic Facebook icon.  Instead, you will see the friend’s picture and name with a small badge in the top right for each network. You can also comment/like Facebook items right from popups.
• Trending News: We’ve partnered with the folks at OneRiot to bring the latest trending news stories to your social feeds.  You can enable/disable via Preferences > General & Profile.
• Facebook Dislike: We’re amazed by how many people wanted to “Dislike” Facebook posts.  The Dislike Button Facebook page has over 3.2 million fans!  You asked for it, you got it.
• MySpace Newsfeed: We’ve revamped the MySpace newsfeed to support their new APIs so it looks a lot more like the Facebook/Twitter feeds including the ability to comment on statuses.
• MySpace Achievements: Back in September we introduced achievements for Facebook and the functionality is being ported over to MySpace.  You will be asked if you would like to enable or disable this functionality and you can turn it on/off by editing your MySpace account in Preferences.
• Yahoo HTTP Support: Restrictive firewalls and proxies should no longer be an issue for Yahoo Messenger users.  Edit the account in preferences and set it to “Always use HTTP”

Up next is per-character formatting (so you can finally bold parts of an IM), group chat (long overdue), a greater focus on finishing up mac/linux releases (no ETA yet),  and a few other fun things we have up our sleeve for you.  Let us know what you think of this release in the comments.

If you run into any bugs please use “Help > Send Bug Report” in the main menu to submit a diagnostic log or email us at bugs@digsby.com.  We’ll keep pushing to make Digsby even better and greatly appreciate your help in spreading the word!

Update 1 (2/15/2010 5:30pm EST): We just pushed out a small patch fixing a few bugs in this release.  One of them caused auto-update to not work for some users and another caused Digsby to hit rate limits with the bit.ly service because of excessive URL shortening for trending news stories.  The new release number is 26376.  Enjoy!

We just pushed out a small patch (r26306) fixing an issue with the Facebook news feed for non-alpha users. Alpha testers will get a new release later today with this and other fixes.

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

It’s been almost two months since our last release so this one is jam packed with lots of goodness!  We just pushed an update to alpha testers (Build 76, r26081 r26136 r26183 r26272 r26307 r26321) which includes a large number of features, bug fixes and enhancements.  As always, you can read the entire list of enhancements on our Change Log. Notable changes include:

• New Skins: The “Windows 7″ skin now has 8 new variants by @derekerdmann.  Access them via Preferences > Skins.
• Windows 7 Support: Digsby takes advantage of jump lists for easy access to common tasks and top buddies (by log size).  We also use taskbar grouping to let you jump to conversations, see typing notifications and unread conversation counts.
• Better Popups: Social networks will no longer show a separate popup for Alerts and the titles will no longer say “Facebook Newsfeed” with a generic Facebook icon.  Instead, you will see the friend’s picture and name with a small badge in the top right for each network. You can also comment/like Facebook items right from popups.
• Trending News: We’ve partnered with the folks at OneRiot to bring the latest trending news stories to your social feeds.  You can enable/disable via Preferences > General & Profile.
• Facebook Dislike: We’re amazed by how many people wanted to “Dislike” Facebook posts.  The Dislike Button Facebook page has over 3.2 million fans!  You asked for it, you got it.
• MySpace Newsfeed: We’ve revamped the MySpace newsfeed to support their new APIs so it looks a lot more like the Facebook/Twitter feeds including the ability to comment on statuses.
• MySpace Achievements: Back in September we introduced achievements for Facebook and the functionality is being ported over to MySpace.  You will be asked if you would like to enable or disable this functionality and you can turn it on/off by editing your MySpace account in Preferences.
• Yahoo HTTP Support: Restrictive firewalls and proxies should no longer be an issue for Yahoo Messenger users.  Edit the account in preferences and set it to “Always use HTTP”

We’re excited to get this release solidified and pushed out to all users so if you experience any issues please use “Help > Send Bug Report” in the main menu to submit a diagnostic log or email us at bugs@digsby.com.

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.

Update 1 (2/1/2010 5:00pm EST): We just pushed out a patch fixing many of the issues you’ve been reporting.  The new release number is r26136.  We are still working to fix issues with the taskbar like it not obeying the don’t show preference and the phantom Digsby window.  We’ll push these out ASAP.  For now, here is what the new patch fixes.  Let us know if you run into new issues or continue to see these bugs:

• Fixed a bug that caused the CPU to spike for some users
• Fixed a bug that caused some Hotmail accounts to fail to connect
• Fixed a bug that caused email actions to break for some Hotmail accounts
• Fixed a bug that caused MySpace to show the login window instead of failing to connect when there are network issues
• Fixed a bug that caused ICQ incoming messages to get cut off or lost in some cases
• Fixed a few bugs that caused docking and auto-hide to break after double clicking the tray icon
• Fixed a bug that caused MSN authentication request popups to show on login
• Fixed a bug that caused IM unread counts to stick around if closing an IM window using the taskbar preview panels
• Fixed a bug that caused Twitter to show an unread count even if all tweets were read
• Ensure that at least the four main Facebook filters make it into the dropdown
• Disabled the “top buddies” portion of the jump list for now while we optimize its performance

Update 2 (2/4/2010 12:00pm EST): We pushed out another build fixing most of the remaining issues in this alpha release.  The new release number is r26183.  MySpace login will still fail for some users and we’re working on that now along with final polish.  List of changes:

• Fixed a bug that added a fake Digsby window to the taskbar previews
• Fixed the “show in taskbar” preference on Windows 7
• Fixed a bug that caused MSN authorization popups to show every time you log in
• Brought back the top buddies position of the jump list
• Improved performance for calculating log sizes so the jump list doesn’t slow Digsby down
• Removed status icons from the jump list because once you pin a buddy we can no longer update the icon unfortunately
• Fixed a bug that caused taskbar previews to show as black icons for some AIM buddies without a buddy icon
• Fixed a bug that caused buddies to open in an IM window without a tab if you previously closed that tab using the taskbar previews
• Fixed a bug that caused buddies to not show in the taskbar previews if you drag them out into their own window and then drag them back in
• The folks at MySpace fixed a bug which prevented their set status API from working properly
• The tab key now finishes a Twitter autocomplete (in addition to Enter)
• Fixed a bug that caused Digsby to freeze when there’s an invalid JID on your Jabber buddy list

Update 3 (2/8/2010 6:30pm EST): This build patches up the rest of the known issues with this alpha release and introduces support for commenting on MySpace statuses.  MySpace login will still fail for some users but they should have this fixed by tomorrow.  Please let us know if any new issues were introduced or if any bugs remain which were new in this series of alphas.  List of changes:

• Added support for commenting on MySpace statuses!
• Fixed a bug with the new Yahoo HTTP support that caused it to disconnect regularly
• Fixed a bug that caused buddies with underscores in their username to be ignored when making jump lists
• Fixed a bug that caused Facebook Chat buddies to be ignored when making jump lists
• Fixed a bug that caused Facebook popup notifications to break when clicking “Like” in some cases
• Another attempt to fix a bug that caused MSN to get stuck in “loading contact list”
• Fixed a bug that caused the “typing” badge to show on the wrong taskbar icon in Windows 7 if your tabs are not combined
• Fixed a bug that caused taskbar previews to show out of order if you drag a tab out into its own window and then dragged it back in
• Fixed a bug that caused status to get set incorrectly when returning from invisible
• Optimized diagnostic logging to improve overall Digsby performance
• Twitter popups will show your timeline tweets before search results
• When clicking the taskbar icon if the buddy list is hidden, slide it back into view

Update 4 (2/10/2010 11:15am EST): This build fixes a few more issues, and includes the fix for Facebook that was applied to the public beta earlier today. Other fixes include:

• Several problems related to the infobox for Facebook and MySpace accounts are now fixed
• A bug which caused AIM self-status messages to display as HTML

Update 5 (2/11/2010 12:00pm EST): One last patch as we get ready to release this to all users later today.  Final release number will be r26321.