Digsby Blog

Build 77 – Private Alpha Release

2010-03-12T00:53:29Z

We just pushed an update to alpha testers (Build 77, r26907 r26910 r26921) 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 (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 (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.

Digsby Donates!

2010-02-26T09:38:02Z

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:

MSN Servers Down

2010-02-16T18:31:56Z

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.

Build 76 – Fighting the Winter Blues!

2010-02-15T22:22:14Z

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!

A Quick Facebook Fix

2010-02-10T15:33:46Z

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.

Build 76 – Private Alpha Release

2010-02-11T16:59:28Z

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.

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.

* 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

Better Commenting with Disqus

2010-01-20T21:19:49Z

We moved the blog commenting system over to Disqus to provide a richer user experience. Major differences you will see are:

You can now reply to comments and the replies are threaded making them more like a conversation
You can ‘like’ comments
You can comment with your Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, Yahoo, or Disqus account to tie them to your real identity
All the comments you make on blogs that use Disqus are available in one central place
Easily post your comment back to Facebook or Twitter to share it with friends

Digsby Twitter Background Contest Winners!

2009-12-14T23:53:56Z

With over 200 submissions and hundreds of fan votes, the Digsby Twitter Background contest has ended and we are excited to announce the winners! Before we do though, we just want to say how amazed we are by the talent of our fans. It was a very difficult decision. There were some incredible submissions so we’re highlighting the top 10 on our Spread the Word page along with buttons and banners that you can place on your blog or website to promote Digsby.

Without further ado, here are the winners of the Digsby Twitter Background Contest:

1st place (by @letusdare2think)

2nd place (by @wemps)

3rd place (by @Jerlyn)

The winners will receive Amazon Gift Cards, Digsby T-Shirts and Digsby USB Drives! We can’t thank you enough for your participation and hard work. Be sure to keep a look out for more fantastic contests and check out all 10 top picks on the Digsby Spread the Word page!

Build 75 – Holiday Hoopla!

2009-12-09T19:44:43Z

We just pushed a new release (Build 75, r25261) to all users! We’ve made some big changes to Digsby making it faster and better than ever! This release includes all the features, bug fixes and enhancements in Builds 71, 72, and 75 on our Change Log. Notable changes include:

Crash Fixes: Thanks to the help of our dedicated testers who have been running the DEBUG version, we fixed the most common crash causing bugs in Digsby. Based on the volume of crash reports, we expect Digsby to crash for less than 0.1% of users on any given day. Now that’s solid!
Memory Leaks: We took some time to hunt down and fix the most serious memory leaks in Digsby, many of which were introduced in the new Twitter implementation. This will improve performance significantly when running Digsby for an extended period of time or on older machines.
Twitter: We fixed numerous issues with Twitter including tweets being show out of order, incorrect unread counts, connection issues, etc. It is still a work in progress and we’ll continue to improve our Twitter implementation.
Block Indicator: Blocked buddies now show a “blocked” icon where their status icon would normally appear on the buddy list.
Win 7: We added support for aero snapping and fixed several windows 7 specific bugs. We will release more Win 7 enhancements in the next build including jump lists and badges on the taskbar icon.
And More: Over 100 other bug fixes and enhancements!

We will keep pushing to make Digsby even better and want to thank all of you for your continued feedback and support. If you want to tell the world about the Digsby, here are some ways you can help:

Share Digsby on sites like Digg, Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit
Invite your friends to try Digsby via Facebook or Email
Write a review of Digsby on your blog and include the Digsby Demo Video
Use the “ShareThis” and “Buzz” widgets below to share the news

If you experience any bugs in this release, please use “Help > Send Bug Report” in the main menu to submit a diagnostic log or email us.

Update (12/9/2009 2:45pm EST): Facebook is having issues with their API servers, which is causing the newsfeed to fail to connect for some users. This will fix itself when they resolve the problem on their end.

Advice for College Students

2009-12-07T22:44:47Z

RIT recently opened its brand new Center for Student Innovation, a 24/7 facility where students can come together to turn ideas into innovative products and solutions.

Digsby started as a class project at RIT. It was taken from idea to reality by a team of RIT grads so our CEO was asked to give the keynote address at the grand opening.

The video below offers some good advice for college students: