Ads suck

I just upgraded my Yahoo Messenger to version 7.5 - not because I really wanted to, but because of the pop-up "offering" to upgrade every 30 minutes or so. Big mistake - the new messenger comes equipped with animated banner ads at the bottom of the client.

Dear Yahoo: big, animated ads suck! Especially if you don't provide an option to disable them. I was already checking out alternative clients like gaim, when I ran across this useful tip on how to disable the ads:

Open Regedit, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Yahoo\pager\YUrl and create a new string key named Messenger Ad that has the value * (an asterisk).

Happy chatting!