Yahoo! Messenger 8 Tutorials

Glossary

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A

Address Book: a listing of people and their email addresses associated with each Yahoo! Mail account.
Alias: a unique name that identifies you to others in a chat room.
Archive: a place to save a history of all of your instant messages, alerts, conferences, and text messages.
Audible: an animated character inserted in an instant message that says something out loud to your contact after you send your message, such as "Welcome" or "Dude!"
Avatar: a character that you can personalize to express your mood at any given time. It's like a virtual you. By changing hairstyles, clothes, accessories, and backgrounds, you can create your own unique persona.

Blast: any quick thought you want to share with everyone you know or just with a small circle of friends.
Blog: a short form of weblog, a personal journal published on the Web.

Chat: an online discussion to which multiple users can contribute simultaneously.
Chat room: an area online where you can chat with other Internet users in real-time.
Clipboard: a temporary storage area in Windows that is used for storing various types of data (such as text, graphics, sound, and video). The clipboard can hold one piece of information at a time for use in a program or to cut/copy and paste information between programs.
Contact: a person with whom you interact; someone to whom you might want to send an email or instant message.
Content tab: a tab at the bottom of the Messenger window that provides access to additional Yahoo! features, such as sports and games.
Conversation: an exchange of instant messages between you and a contact.

Display image: a picture or avatar that represents you in some way and that you share with your contacts during IM conversations.
Download: to transfer a file from a remote computer to your computer.

Emoticon: a small character that shows someone how you feel during an IM conversation, such as happy , sad , or laughing .
Emotions: words or phrases that help you express your feelings in a chat room.

Group: one or more contacts that you organize together under one unique name, similar to an email list. By default, Yahoo! Messenger adds contacts to the "Friends" group included in the application.

Ignore List: a list of people from whom you don't want to see or hear anything while you're using Yahoo! Messenger.
IM: the acronym for instant message.
IMVironment (IMV): a themed environment that you can select when instant messaging your friends. Potentially, both you and your friends see the IMV during your conversation.
Instant messaging: the ability to exchange messages in real time with other people over the Internet.

LAUNCHcast Radio: a streaming music service that allows you to create your own customized station tailored to your tastes and provides an extensive collection of other music stations that offer a wide variety of genres and themes to choose from.
Leader: the subject with the greatest buzz score on a given day. Subjects are the most searched subjects on Yahoo! for that day.
LiveWords: this feature enables contextual searches from any topic, word, or phrase in Yahoo! Messenger.

Message input area: the text box at the bottom of the IM conversation window where you type in your message.
Messenger List: a list of coworkers, friends, family, and associates who also use Yahoo! Messenger.
Mover: the subjects with the greatest percentage increase in buzz score from one day to the next.

Offline: not connected to the Internet or any other network.
On hold: when the connection during a phone call is maintained, but the person on the other end cannot hear anything on your end.
Online: connected to the Internet.
Open Talk: a Messenger feature that lets your friends connect a PC-to-PC call your PC without waiting for you to accept the call.

PC-to-PC calling: the ability to call another person's computer from your computer; similar to placing a phone call. Both you and the person you are calling must have a Yahoo! ID and be logged into Yahoo! Messenger.
Plug-in: a software program that adds a specific feature or service to another program.
Profile: a public web page provided with a Yahoo! ID that lets others learn something about the person associated with the ID, such as hobbies and favorite links. You and each of your contacts have a profile that others can view. You can have more than one profile and choose which profile others see.
Prompt: a message that guides the user to take some action, such as "Please leave a message after the tone."

Ringtone: a brief audio file played to indicate an incoming call. You can select your preferred ringtone in Yahoo! Messenger.

Skin: a color choice for the windows that Messenger uses.
Slide bar: control that allows you to scroll vertically through the thumbnail images in the Shared Photos side panel.
Slider: the position indicator on a slide bar. You can drag the slider along the slide bar to change the selected thumbnail.
Slideshow: a self-running presentation that displays larger versions of the photos, one at a time, on a photos page.
Spammer: someone who sends spam.
Stealth setting: a setting that allows you to choose when specific contacts see you as online or offline.
Synchronize: to cause items in multiple locations to match exactly.

Virus: a computer program that attaches itself to other programs and causes harm to computer software, data, and/or hardware, often undetected until it is too late.
Voice message: a message left in the caller's own voice for the intended recipient to listen to later.

Yahoo! ID: the name by which a person is known to all Yahoo! networks.
Yahoo! Phone In: a premium, subscription-based service of Yahoo! Voice that attaches a phone number to your Yahoo! ID so that you can receive phone calls to your computer through Messenger.
Yahoo! Phone Out: a pre-paid Yahoo! Voice account that allows you to make calls using Messenger from your computer to any regular phone or mobile phone in over 30 countries.