In my setup, I have a Logitech remote changing everything, so to get the XBox ready, it moves through the TV inputs to the correct one, turns the XBox on and goes through the receiver's inputs to the right one. So, to check and see if my friend is on or left me a message, takes a few minutes. Then after getting to the XBox, I go through it again to get back to my TiVo inputs/settings. This saves me five minutes every time I want to see if a friend is on.
And since I can type messages to people, it saves me from using that awful onscreen keyboard and wanting to kill myself.
It would be cool if you could hear the voice messages, but really, that's likely difficult to do and not really necessary. I like the new translucency and my only gripe would be having to resize the window every time it opens. If it could resize itself (I don't have a ton of contacts in my list), that'd be cool. Otherwise, great work!
(Version 2.0b)