We had some exciting times here in the eBuddy Offices last week, as lot’s of people were getting ready to go to San Francisco for various purposes. The Sales team was looking forward to attend ad:tech San Francisco and our Engineers were all excited about attending Facebook’s f8 Conference.

But then a vulcano in Iceland erupted and the ash crisis turned much of the continent into a no-fly zone for days. Each day there was still some hope, but both the sales team and the engineers saw their flights cancelled.

But there is also good news to share, two of our Developers were invited to speak at two seperate Conferences.

Menno van Slooten will be speaking at the jQuery Conference in San Francisco this weekend 24th and 25th of April. He has written a basic framework which allows our web developers to easily write tests for our new web based IM client. These tests are written in JavaScript and run completely in the browser. We are in the process of cleaning the code up a little bit and plan to release it as an open source project to the jQuery community. The jQuery people thought this was so cool and invited him over as a speaker.

And Peter Thiessen will be speaking at the 2010 W4A conference, co-located with the W3C Conference held on April 26th and 27th. He will be presenting his paper, WAI-ARIA Live Regions: eBuddy IM as a Case Example. The paper outlines current accessibility issues with Web 2.0 and presents the WAI-ARIA specification as a solution for not only disabled persons but also mobile users who share common barriers to accessing Web content.

So very cool stuff in the works here at eBuddy, if we have your attention, check out some vacancies we have here: http://www.ebuddy.com/jobs.php.

We love gadgets here at eBuddy. We love new technologies even more, because they challenge us to take our products to new heights.

eBuddy exists for only 6 years, but since then we have seen many shifts in the way technology has influenced our products: from the first Mobile messenger to the eBuddy Pro for iPhone, a lot has changed.  Technology has allowed us to create bigger and better applications, focusing on providing the best chat experience to our users.

The launch of the iPad shows signs of yet another change in the market, so we knew we had to get one as soon as possible.

If there ever was a drawback of being located in Amsterdam, it would be that the iPad is not yet available here. The big question remained: how to get an iPad?

Luckily eBuddy has many friends all over the world. With the help of some American friends, we managed to get the first iPad in the Netherlands: it landed at 6:44am on Easter Sunday, only 16 hours after the Apple Stores opened their doors to start selling the iPad!

In order to remember this adventurous weekend, we have made a wallpaper of eBuddy holding our iPad in front of Amsterdam’s International Airport, Schiphol. The wallpaper is pretty popular here in the office and now you can have it too: Just choose your wished resolution below and enjoy!

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Today we are launching our brand new eBuddy Web Messenger here at eBuddy. You might have used it in the past months when it was available for beta testing, but as of today everyone will get our latest addition to the eBuddy family. This completely new Messenger is faster, better and easier to use than the previous version. Of course it boasts all the functionality that you expect of eBuddy, even a bit more…

Let me highlight the biggest changes that we have made, so you have an idea what to expect:
First, this new Messenger is faster than ever before! Long startup times was the biggest complaint we received on our old version. Our tests with the new version show that loading and logging in is twice as fast as before. Also we’ve done some technical tricks which optimize loading time even more if you are on a slow connection. So no more endless waiting before eBuddy loads, and more time for chatting!

Second, we’ve built several new functions. For example you can now use your webcam to set your avatar. When you’re at school or at work and want to show your new haircut, just snap a picture and set it as your avatar! Already have a great picture of yourself? No problem, you can upload that as well! Also you can customize eBuddy to your needs, by changing the way the contact list shows and is ordered, changing the color theme of eBuddy or customizing the way we notify you of new messages.

Besides all this new stuff, the new eBuddy Web Messenger boasts an array of functions like groupchat, sending and receiving buzzers, emoticons and custom emoticons (MSN only). Also you can have multiple accounts online at the same time. Want to chat on MSN, Facebook and Yahoo at the same time? No problem, just hook them up in your eBuddy ID.

I can go on for hours about all the cool things you can do with the New Web Messenger, but just try it yourself. I’m sure you’ll like it, but don’t hesitate to let us know what you think! Leave a comment on the blog or answer the questionnaire, so we can make the next version even better!