Several features have been added or improved in the latest Yahoo instant messenger including support for high-quality, full screen video and voice calling, a new updates feature that lists what friends are doing on Twitter, Last.fm, Yahoo, Flickr and other sites and services and improved language support to change the interface language of the messenger with just one click of the mouse button.

Yahoo has created a video that outlines the most important changes in Yahoo Messenger 10.

Additional features

1. Instant message with one friend, or conference in a bunch
2. All-new Insider with Yahoo! Mail, news, weather, search and more
3. Easily find or invite friends from other services to come chat with you
4. Send text messages (SMS) to friends’ mobile phones for free*
5. Make free PC-to-PC calls and PC-to-phone calls for as low as 1¢ a minute (plus free voicemail!)
6. Use the built-in media player to watch web videos and view photos with friends
7. Show your style with emoticons, Avatars, audibles and IMVironments

The Yahoo Messenger 10 Download is offered at the official website for all support operating systems and devices.

Several new and improved features have been added to Yahoo Messenger 10. The following list contains some of these features. It has been directly taken from the blog post that announced the final version of Yahoo Messenger 10:

High-quality video calls
We’ve completely redesigned our 1:1 webcam feature (under the hood too). Now you can make a high-quality video call to a friend with synched audio, right in the IM window. Features include the ability to swap video windows, position the video windows side-by-side, mute the call or place it on hold. You can even go full-screen with your video call. To get started, click the new “Video Call” button in the IM window (your friend also needs to be on Yahoo! Messenger 10).

New “Y! Updates” view of your contact list
People are busy these days, doing all sorts of interesting things online. To help you keep up with your friends, we added an alternate view of your contact list that shows a real-time stream of their updates, including Messenger status message changes. If they’ve opted-in to share their updates via Yahoo!, you’ll be able to see what they’re saying on Twitter, reading on Yahoo! Buzz, listening to on last.fm, and more.

We also added additional features for how and when you see your friends’ updates. When a new update comes in, a “toast” alert will pop up in the lower right corner of your screen. If you want to disable these, go to Messenger > Preferences > Yahoo! Updates. You can turn alerts on and off and even update preferences by contact or by type of update.

Find more to chat about
Within the new “Yahoo! Updates” view, you’re sure to find more to talk about with your friends. To make it easy, we added a hover menu that lets you quickly IM a friend about their update. When you do, the update appears inline in the conversation window, so when you start your IM with “I can’t believe you like this song!”, your friend will know what you’re talking about. Note that your friend needs to also be on Yahoo! Messenger 10 to see the update inline.

Change your language easily
If you use the U.S. version but wish it could be in your local language, you’re in luck. When you start up Yahoo! Messenger 10, you’ll notice a new language menu on the sign-in screen. Choose from 16 different languages and the buttons, menus and various parts of the interface will change to that language. If you’re already signed in, you can also change your language under Messenger > Preferences > Language (you’ll have to restart Yahoo! Messenger for it to take effect).

The default Yahoo Messenger 10 download will download a so called web installer which is a small setup file that will try to download the remaining data from the Internet during installation. This requires an active Internet connection. Users who prefer a direct download can download the Yahoo Messenger 10 Windows offline installer here. It is either way recommended to do a custom installation in the instant messenger itself to avoid installing components like the Yahoo Toolbar to the computer system.

Yahoo Mail now comes with a redesigned mobile version that is available at http://m.yahoo.com/ that now offers one click access to important functions, attachment downloads like pdf or Microsoft Word documents and access to personal folders. The attachment size was raised from 10 Megabytes to 25 which is the exact same size that Gmail is offering it’s users. The inbox of Yahoo Mail is expanded with an application box that is bringing third party apps like Picnik, ZumoDirve or PayPal to the inbox with more (Evite was mentioned) to come in future updates.

Yahoo Mail Contacts are improved as well as they can now be automatically updated whenever a contact changes their name, e-mail address or phone number.

Yahoo Messenger 10 Beta is now available for download. It introduces HD video calling and social improvements that keep users informed about their contacts including status updates. Other additions include Flickr uploads, Yahoo! Buzz stories, Tweets and more that are all available from the messenger’s interface.

Yahoo Search was upgraded as well. It does however seem that only search engine users from the United States will be able to access the new functionality that allows them to explore related concepts, filter results by popular websites only or narrow down search results by type.

Yahoo is adding more social elements to their products. They also started to add features that were introduced by Google and Microsoft services like the email attachment size of 25 Megabytes.

via Ycorpblog