Xat staff was on xat.com/help this morning for “unscheduled testing” of new features and smilies.

Some of the few new smilies submitted to us from xatblogs.com user iJayy are:

contempt, fedup, horror, look, ribbon, spin, tipsy

All of which are currently viewable on the Xatworld smiley generator.

Those users lucky enough to be in the chat were witness to both user defined colored smilies AND powers, num with capital letters, the ability to add both hands and hair to things like pig (not just yellow smilies), and a few other things.

Pay particular attention to the blog posts streaming into xatblogs.com right now. Many people were able to take excellent screenshots of what was going on.

Stay tuned for more and try out the Xatworld.com smiley generator now while it lasts.

For a very limited time Xat short names (those registered ID’s that are less than 10 characters in length) are being offered at half off.

xatBlogs.com user Spellchecker (yep he’s back!) posted the great news only minutes after Xat’s own twitter feed had been updated. Anyway, if you’ve ever thought of getting a short name, now would be the time to do it; the special last this weekend only.

Users that access Spanish Xat will see that the upper right Help and Trade icons, those typically found sitewide on every chat page, have now been replaced by their Spanish counterparts, Ayuda and Cambio; truly a milestone for one of Xat’s most trafficked site demographics.

Sometime this afternoon, Xat rolled out two new links (forum and share) located at the top of any of the individual chat pages.

“Forum” directly links chat pages to Xat’s own Community help forum. The positioning of this new link may be all that Xat needs to get people to more easily find and participate in their forums.

The “share” link seems like a intermediary compromise to something that we personally submitted to Xat staff and wrote up on the Xat suggestions page. Regardless, we’re extremely happy to see Xat pushing growth via any of the many social networks and look forward to the new signups.

I’m too lazy to post these on Xatworld’s Xat avatars page, but if anyone would like Valentines avatars, here are two such sets:

Source: Super DJ’s avatars

Source: zJarios avatars

It’s taken some time but we finally have our Xatworld Facebook fan page up and running. Join our race to 100 members right now! Last one in buys xats for everyone. Let’s go!

Join Xatworld on Facebook

Several months ago we had the idea of creating an offsite (that’s “outside” of Xat.com) Smiley generator that would simply allow a user to input a shortcode (i.e. omg, smile, d#red, etc…), hit a submit button, and have the Xat smile instantly generated full size. It seemed like a great way to get full size Xat smiley graphics with the added benefit of being able to customize each one; just like you would on Xat.

Currently, Xat smiley “experimentation” can only take place within the constraints of each chatbox. This very simple generator allows you to quickly type in smiley codes, generate the image, and get a nice clean image on a solid white background; great for creating Xat graphics, Xat comics, Xat backgrounds, or simply trying out different code combinations to later use live in a chatbox.

Anyway, after presenting the idea to Xat staff we were happy to hear that they would possibly be putting a Smiley pimper together themselves. As such, we have decided to keep our version very simple and will eagerly wait for Xat to come up with something better.

In the meantime, have fun with our Xat Smiley generator.

Thank you to Xat.com for the swf

P.S. There are a few code combinations that can only be added, updated by Xat directly.

A few users have mentioned seeing a glitch that allows Tempmem users to add partial (CD) functionality to any smiley. By partial, I mean the headphones only.

Required: Tempmem
How to: Purchase and activate Tempmem, then add “#cd” to the end on any smiley code (i.e. (smile#cd), (mad#cd), (omg#cd), (maniac#cd))

Examples:

If you have any other information, feel free to comment below.

Thanks!

Update: Blue, xatBlogs member, was quick to point out that this isn’t the only Tempmem glitch. You can also add a night cap to any yellow smiley by appending “#sleep” to the end of your smile code. (i.e. (smile#sleep)

Update: One more, you can also add a friendster sign to any yellow smiley by appending “#fs” to the end of your smile code. (i.e. (smile#fs)

After an unprecedented 19 releases, available in blocks of 100 to 200 units, Tempmem has finally settled down and is now available on Xat’s powers page for a mere 15 days. Contrary to speculation, this power is now officially not limited.

This morning, about an hour ago, Xat officially announced that power 61 will be Temporary member. That power is now is testing and we should soon have more details on how exactly it works. On a similar note, Xat has also announced plans to change the way Temp Mod works.

Stay tuned for that!

Update 1 : Power 61, like tempmod, is used by private chatting a user. To “temp member” a user simply type /mb5.0 to make him a temporary member (5.0 being the number of hours). Note that with a few limitations, this power is for and can only by used by Main owners, owners, moderators and tempmods.

Limitations include and are particular to tempmods. Tempmods are able to both make temporary members (but only for one hour) and also guest any temporary members.