Author Topic: *Please Read* YTK's Future As FREEWARE & More...  (Read 749 times)

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Offline Adam X

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*Please Read* YTK's Future As FREEWARE & More...
« on: January 25, 2013, 10:12:26 am »
Brock and I have been extremely busy over the last year and a half with our other jobs and we apologize for the lack of being accessible to you. Some of you have to keep in mind that Yahoo! has been more or less 'dead' for a long time now and YTK was still working well enough to not NEED an update, give or take a bug or two that can be worked around. YTK Pro was launched back in November of 2006 and eventually you just get burnt out on it all.
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With Yahoo! Inc. closing down their chat rooms to the non-Japanese it has made Yahoo! Messenger (US version) simply a souped up pager mode tool once again (which is how it started, just not souped up). By the rooms being shut down it's on it's last leg and all that's left are it's capabilities outside of chat (IM's, conferences, games, plug-ins, file transfers etc). Yahoo! took away A LOT and, let's face it, it's been dying for many years. This was the 2nd to last nail in the coffin for Yahoo! Messenger.

Features that were removed -->> http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2012/11/30/updates-to-yahoo-messenger-features

YTK had support for Pingbox and had some nice options while it existed to us (including one which Yahoo! "borrowed" themselves - 'Require the sender to have a Nickname to Message you'). I had other options planned to lock down the domain and the specific webpage where the visitor would message you so you could control whether the messages legitimately came from that URL or not (if no location was supplied then that'd be another option). This never made it into YTK because Pingbox was, more or less, a feature that nobody used much. AOL had this with AIM and not just it but full user-created chat rooms that could be embedded on your website or anywhere you liked. They took these away and their web chat a couple years ago. Why? Who knows, it was a great idea and I personally loved it. Taking away Yahoo! Phone-In & Phone-Out reduces Messenger back to being VoIM instead of true VoIP (the ability to at least call landlines is what VoIP is, optionally mobile phones too). At least their PC to PC Video & Voice calling will still function and it's still free, of course.

Brock and I had made numerous fixes, some changes to certain features, and now, most of that was a waste of time. We realize that it's been 1 year and 10 months (nearly 2 years) since YTK Enhanced has been updated, however, it obviously still functions and does it's job. We're aware of the changes that've occurred since the last public release of YTK and they'll be fixed (most of them already are). YTK still has anti-boot, privacy and security functionality, integration into YM, and a ton of enhancements that are still very much useful. We stopped selling YTK just days after Yahoo! closed down their US chat rooms on the 14th of last month. We'll be cleaning the program up a bit and focusing on it's life as a Pager-Mode and Conferencing tool. Some of the chat room specific features, such as the Multimedia support, is still useful and can be broadcasted to your friends via your status and in conferences.

Over the next several days the main site @ http://www.ytkpro.com may face some downtime for a bit for maintenance. It WILL be back if this happens. If it does become unavailable then you can still come to this forum using it's direct URL -->> http://www.ytk.smfnew.com instead of using -->> http://forum.ytkpro.com. I've kept up with all that is Yahoo! Messenger (including chat still while it was around for us non-Japanese) and going forward you'll realize that neither Brock or I have lost a step. Anybody that knows about Yahoo! Messenger should know that without YTK they'll always be vulnerable to some nasty stuff, not just harmless boots. YTK has kept thousands of chatters safe and satisfied for over 6 years now and counting. While I'm not saying that we'll be working on YTK, now that it's becoming freeware, as much as we did when it first debuted as paid commercial software (YTK Pro) - I will say that it'll be updated to fix any major bugs, issues, adding some new features if we decide on them, and for compatibility to maintain the plethora of features it's had for over a half decade.

*Note* We're still somewhat considering adding chat room support for using Yahoo!'s Japanese servers (as extremely vulnerable as they are, more on this later). You wouldn't have to use the Y! Japan version of Messenger, if we do this, as it's as simple as switching a few packet type's strings for the locale and pointing to those servers instead of the US-based ones that no longer have chat room entry. The Japanese division of Yahoo!, in many aspects, are YEARS behind on just about everything pertaining to Messenger (and chat rooms). Booters have already been created to drop entire rooms in Yahoo! Japan and there's really nothing that can be done about it, there is no Dual-Mode that is possible with Y! Japan chat servers either (their newest version of Messenger is 9.5.1) as they're still using YMSGv16 as their current protocol. For Dual-Mode to work it required at least YMSGv18 (or v19). Version 102 works fine on Japanese servers though but that's about it, it won't help you against what's out there (stuff that was patched on the US chat servers recently and many YEARS ago).

I'll be posting more on the current Messenger/chat 'scene' and will be posting some useful and interesting information until the next build of YTK is available; which will be 100% FREE, 100% CLEAN of course, and due out SOON! This includes some DO's and DONT's with the current (very dated) public build of YTK Enhanced and other random stuff worth mentioning. Brock and I will keep you UPDATED regularly until it's re-launched as a freeware program. There will be no need for pirated/**** versions of YTK Enhanced anymore and no more registration key codes/licenses to have to worry about either! ;D
« Last Edit: January 25, 2013, 10:51:25 am by Adam »

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