Yahoo! Cool Thing of the Day

It's like jazz. If you have to explain the appeal of a service like mixd, you'll never get it.

For those not in the know: take one part IRC, one part Y!Groups, a few dashes of IM, mix and serve chilled on your phone. Very cool for groups of folks to keep in touch without having to constantly remember to send that text to paul.

(Ok, semi-funny true story. One of the engineers who worked on this told me about it about an hour after it launched. I see what it is, get fairly excited because I get how cool this is, and ask if I can blog about it. He tells me "No, it's not quite ready for full time. It's only US right now because they're still working on getting all the wireless folks in line." Not fifteen minutes later, I'm sitting in a meeting scanning blogs and see it show up on Jeremy's linkblog. Cat, meet bag, hey! wait! come back here cat!)

A few things to note:

• It's still very much in beta, so PLEASE be sure to use that feedback link.
• There are some things you can only do from SMS (e.g. change your nickname). If you want to be a cheap bugger, here's the help text you get:
  

  Cmds: New <mixername>: create new Mixer.
  Add <nickname or phone#>: add people to a Mixer.
  Whisper <nickname or phone#> : send private msg.
  Mute: stop messages from the Mixer.
  Leave: leave the Mixer.
  Stop all: stop all messages
  Ignore <nick or phone#>: stop messages from that user
  Friends: list your friends
  Who: list Mixer members
  List: list my Mixers
  Kick <nick or phone#>: Kick user from mixer
  Nick <nickname>: Change ur nickname

  Yes, the use of 133t is justified here. "Nick" is an example of one of the "only available via SMS commands" that has yet to make it onto the web interface.

• If your carrier isn't working yet, it should be soon. I know it works with Sprint (which surprised some of the folks that are working on it), Cingular Blue, Verison, and a few others. Obviously you also want a plan that's fairly generous with the SMS messages ;). All carriers should be supported (there may be a few minor issues with T*mobile, but they're being worked on.)

A few additional points. The Mixer originator (Mix master?) has to have a Y!ID, but folks in the mixer don't. You simply add them and they show up. One other nice point is that those folks phone numbers aren't exposed to the other folks. Others just see their nickname. VERY COOL PRIVACY!

Still damn cool and pretty useful.

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