New MSN 7 Beta!

MSN Messenger 7 Build 7.0.0604 was leaked earlier today and I happened to get my hands on it. Very nice improvements, however the bad thing is that with these new features comes some bugs. No mouse-over to see full nickname in contact window, offline status in chat window doesnt work, etc.

Some improvements are:

• The ability to see the display picture next to their name in the contact list window (small or large icons)
• The ability to "share" search results. Hard to explain, but cool nonetheless.
• The ability to have a "personal message" next to your nick name (instead of adding things like "sleeping" in your nick name, you can add it to this instead... sort of more formal.
• The addition of the "My Spaces" button to complement the new Spaces service from MSN.
• The ability to add "now playing" to your nick name, which shows others on your list what you are listening to (only available for Windows Media Player right now)
• A new emoticon called (nah) which is another type of (bah)
  
  
• New features that are not yet activated:
• Offline messaging, like the one ICQ has. Allows you to send messages to offline contacts, and the person will get that message the next time they sign in.
  

A note though... the search results, personal message, and now listening features only work with other people using the same version.

Stay tuned for the public beta release in the coming days. Until then it would be wiser to stay with your current MSN 6.2 or 7 beta release due to some of these minor bugs that need to be fixed.