Yahoo Archive Decoder may be the solution in this cases. The free program can display the Yahoo Messenger chat history on a local computer system even if there is no Internet connection. Even better, it displays the chat history without the need to supply the Yahoo Messenger login first.

The program is fully portable. Just unpack it after downloading it from the developer’s site. First thin that needs to be done to display the chat history is to click on the Open Profile Folder button at the lower left of the screen. This opens a standard file browser. Just locate the Yahoo Messenger profile directory:

• Windows XP users: %ProgramFiles%\Yahoo!\Messenger\
• 32-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7 users: %LocalAppData%\VirtualStore\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\
• 64-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7 users: %LocalAppData%\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Yahoo!\Messenger\

Yahoo Archive Decoder will automatically detect the usernames and conversation partners. The left sidebar displays all conversation partners and dates, the right larger area the actual chat history of a specific day with the selected user.

The software works not only with profiles in the Yahoo Messenger profile folder. It can also display the chat history from backup folders for instance.

A registration at the developer site is required before the software can be downloaded. That’s a nuisance. Check out the application’s page at the developer site for additional information about the Yahoo Messenger chat history revealer.

Yahoo Messenger 11 will offer users some games created by Zynga (not Farmville it seems) and games by other companies so that you can spend even more time using the Instant Messenger, is not that great?

Internet users who want to install Yahoo Messenger 11 should switch from Typical Install to custom Install. Why? Because typical install does not offer to say nay to the Yahoo! Toolbar that gets installed alongside the instant messenger. That is of course unless they want the Yahoo Toolbar and Yahoo BrowserPlus installed on their PCs.

Yahoo! Toolbar – See if your friends are online and change your online status right from your browser. Plus enjoy anytime access to Yahoo! Search and your favorite Yahoo! sites.

Yahoo! BrowserPlus – An add-on for your web browser that makes it easier to send attachments, upload photos and take advantage of other cool features in Yahoo! Mail, Flickr and other Yahoo! services.

Yahoo Messenger 11 will also make yahoo.com the default browser home page and install Yahoo! Search Protection which alerts the user when anyone tries to change the browser’s default search engine. Make sure you remove the options if you do not want some or all of those features.

Yahoo Messenger 11 Features

So what is new in Yahoo Messenger 11? We have already mentioned games.Another new feature is the ability to chat with Facebook friends right from the messenger. Facebook integration goes even further by allowing the user to share and update the status, post comments and keep up with conversations across Facebook and Yahoo from within Yahoo Messenger 11.

More Features

• Use the instant messenger on mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android devices or other Internet enabled phones
• Easily find or invite friends from other services to come chat with you
• Now you can chat with high quality full-screen video.
• Make free PC-to-PC calls and PC-to-phone calls for as low as 1¢ a minute (plus free voicemail!)
• Send text messages (SMS) to friends’ mobile phones for free*
• Instant message with one friend, or conference in a bunch
• Show your style with emoticons, Avatars, audibles and IMVironments
• Use the built-in media player to watch web videos and view photos with friends

Yahoo Messenger 11 is available as a beta release for the Windows operating system. Users can download it directly from Yahoo’s Messenger homepage.

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

It usually means that he can perform all actions to some of his contacts, like talking to them, while the rest thinks that he is not at his computer.

Buddy Spy is a software program for Yahoo! Messenger. It can detect if a buddy is indeed offline or invisible. The software can also check if the user is currently broadcasting with his webcam, if he is in any chat room and if he is on an alias profile or default profile.

Buddy Spy requires the creation of a new Yahoo! Messenger account, usage of the default account would interfere with Yahoo! Messenger and cause errors. After the account has been created the user can use various scans to detect if a buddy is online but invisible.

There might be a use for it though especially if you are among friends in a private channel. Y!Status Revolution brings that to Yahoo Messenger though. Users can select a custom status that includes information like song names and length among others. (A total of seven parameters are available to chose from)

Winamp and AIMP are currently supported to deliver those information and Y!Status Revolution acts as a proxy that changes the status message as soon as a new song begins to play.

There is no information available about supported operating systems or Yahoo Messenger versions. It runs fine on my English Windows XP Service Pack 3 system.

There is however a way to find out if your Yahoo contact or buddy is really offline or only faking that he is offline. It basically lets you detect if they use the invisible mode in Yahoo Messenger.

The easiest way is to use a script like that offered by Xeeber. Just enter the Yahoo ID of your contact or buddy and wait for the script to display the result. You will find out if he is using the invisible mode or really offline.