MSN 7.5

Anyone else upgraded to the new version of MSN? Well when i upgraded i thought it would be just like 'meh, nothing has really changed' and at first glanced it hadn't but they have added this really cool new voice clip feature in this update which lets you record 15seconds of audio and then send it to the person you are chatting too, i havn't used Skype but is Skype sort of like that? Anyway i find it interesting because already after just one day, while i don't have a microphone to record audio clips, the people who do are choosing to just send me audio files rather than type out what they are saying, when i asked why they kept doing it they replied "Because i can't be bothered typing it out obviously, can i?"

Now this could just be because it has only been out for a short while and people are getting used to this new feature but i genuinely think that it has the potential to change instant messaging from text based dialogue to voice based. Of course that is assuming everyone decides they are going to buy a microphone too..

Another reason this voice clip thing is useful to me as an individual user is for track identification, say i went to a gig and i heard some tunes that i totally dug.. now i normally take my digital camera with me to gigs and i probably would have taken a video.. so i upload that video and then record the video sound and send it through msn to a person i think would know the tune, say a dj friend or one of my fellow punters who is a bit more of a trainspotter than me.. a very useful tool! saves me from sending the whole 10mb video file or however long it would take. My flatmate has been getting into production lately and i could see him recording little soundbites of samples and stuff and then sending them through to me asking for a second opinion.

Well thats just some ideas off the top of my head for what i could use this new feature of msn, anyone have any others?

Link to the upgrade:

MSN 7.5