I’m writing this in June. It’s been hot and dry in the Seattle area. But the recent news about Windows Live Messenger’s 10th Anniversary has me thinking of a cold and snowy winter – December 2008 to be exact.
We were scheduled to fly back to Iowa to visit my in-laws when one of the biggest snowstorms Seattle has ever scene decided to arrive. We couldn’t even get out of our neighborhood, much less to the airport. Not that there were that many flight leaving anyway. We stayed at home, but we were still able to celebrate the holiday with our family thanks to Windows Live Messenger.
In a stroke of good luck, we had purchased our in-laws a new Microsoft LifeCam webcam and shipped it to them ahead of time. We made sure that was the first gift that was opened, and they plugged it in and we connected up a video call using Messenger. Now we could see them opening the rest of their gifts, talk to everyone, and even play with the cool special effects the LifeCam software includes. It wasn’t quite like being there in person, but it made being snowed in that much more bearable.
Hopefully next time our good luck extends beyond just buying the right gift to getting the right weather for travelling!
What’s your best Messenger memory? Join the Clubhouse and share your story as part of our Windows community. The Clubhouse makes it easy to share just the blog entries you tag with other community members and with everyone else interested in Windows products.
– Marcus, Windows Community Manager
Marcus @ Microsoft 
June 16, 2009 at 10:31 am |
I sent off my email to WLT this morning. Messenger (older version!) put us in touch with loads of people. Imagine this: Hubs and I, sitting here somewhere between 11:30 and midnight on a freezing winter\’s night, and Hubs\’s brother sits there on "the other side" munching toast, drinking coffee (and whatever else it was!) and winding us both up about how lovely his summer was. The sun shining through Bro\’-in-law\’s window was almost too much…it was great to yatter to each other on camera, but it was freezing here, so we had to knock off \’n\’ go to bed!Funny thing, Marcus – that\’s how I first met Sis-in-law. I saw her bring Bro\’s brekkie in whilst we were sitting, yapping about how much Hubs loves computers (not!) or something;-) I used another service when I got online myself last year, but it was so clunky and difficult to use, I gave up in despair and luckily, managed to find dear ol\’ Messenger:-)
June 16, 2009 at 10:32 am |
Oops! I didn\’t tell ya, they both live in Australia!