Author Archives: Greg C.

About Greg C.

I am passionate about building awesome user experiences, working closely with publishers and watching people "get" technology.

Bowling For Geeks

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Yesterday was a really exciting day at SXSW. We saw some movie stars, AOL won a prestigious web award, and we took on a bunch of other geeks in a ho-down at the bowling alley. A few years ago, Arrested Development was my favorite show on TV (old episodes can be found on hulu.com), and without a doubt that show launched the career of Michael Cera from Superbad and Juno, and it also reinforced the fact that Jeffery Tambour was one of the best comedic actors around. Today he was at SXSW and it was very cool to meet him.

This evening, Kevin Lawver‘s Ficlets which was nominated for two web awards at SXSW, won the award for site with best CSS. Congrats to Kevin and all the folks who worked on it. For those who do not know, Ficlets is a community short story fiction writing site where stories can be strung together and shared with others.

As the web awards were going on, the Open AIM group here attending the conference went to Bowling For Geeks. In a competition between 50 teams bowling two games each, we came in toward the bottom, but had a lot of fun. The folks here in Austin have been awesome this year in getting out and supporting a lot of causes and organizations (of course free food and drinks never hurt).

Mapping the world at SXSW

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API releases are becoming the norm these days from AOL and today we continued the trend with our friends at Mapquest. The Mapquest platform offers free and flexible APIs that allow developers to build rich multi-media applications using a variety of supported programming languages and environments, including JS, AS3, Flash under JS and XML (FUJAX), Java, C++, .net. Here are a few more details, and make sure to check out the Mapquest development blog for updates:

  • A Rich Mapping Interface for creating Rich Internet Applications with our JavaScript, AS3, or FUJAX APIs:
    • Aerial Imagery and Hybrid Views – Satellite imagery and aerial photography.
    • Smart Rollovers – Rollover windows that adapt their size and positioning on the map based on the content placed in the window.
    • Smooth Zoom – Animated transitions between zoom levels.
    • Globe View – A map of the world presented as an interactive globe.
    • “Flickable” Maps – Maps that continue to pan based on speed and friction settings.
    • Advanced Shape Overlays – Build apps that allow users to create and interact with a variety of overlays on maps.
    • Advanced Map Marker Features – With “declutter mode,” automatically move collided markers (POIs) to alternate positions on the map with a customizable leader line pointing back to their original location.
  • Unlimited Maps – Worldwide: Standard or Tiled.
  • Unlimited Geocoding – Multi-line and Single-line Geocoding, Real-time Batch Geocoding, Reverse Geocoding, Postal Code and Town Geocoding.
  • Unlimited Routing – Point-to-Point, Multi-point or Optimized.
  • Simplified Data Management – MapQuest offers access to simple tools to upload and manage location information to help keep websites accurate and relevant.

After using the Mapquest APIs for a couple of years now with out location services in AIM, I am thrilled by this announcement. Congrats to all the great engineers and product folks at Mapquest that released the most flexible mapping APIs out there.

Early Impressions At SXSW

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So far SXSW has lived up to its billing as the most fun and diverse conference out there. Austin provides a great backdrop for all of the action with great music, films and of course interactive discussions. Listening to teens talking about what they want from their online experiences to hearing from Kal Penn, John Cho, and Neil Patrick Harris about what it was like to make Harold and Kumar Go To Guantanamo Bay. Two interesting tidbits to take away from these talks. First, teens do not like advertisements that are not targeted to them, for example, one of the panelists shares he goes to NBA.com to watch videos, and in between clips he sees ads for Miller Lite, he is 16 years old. For Kal and John they talked about how they were surprised that they were casted as leads in a movie like the first Harold and Kumar, basically sharing how much racism there is in Hollywood, but that since Harold and Kumar that they are seeing it change slightly. Seeing a panel debate on which social networking campaign was the biggest flop (HP in my opinion) was enlightening. Overall, SXSW has been as consistent as ever, and you can continue to follow along by tuning into the blog and checking my twitter feed.

A Twitter Plugin for SXSW

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A year ago at SouthBySouthwest (SXSW) Twitter became mainstream in the developer community. The amount of traffic that Twitter experienced over the one week conference was incredible as it seemed that everyone announced their plans each evening via the service. With SXSW, starting this weekend and the Open AIM announcement this week, I thought I would release the latest version of the Twitter plugin for Windows. The plugin supports AIM 6.5+ or AIM Lite.

This plugin will update your status message on Twitter when your status message on AIM changes. The first time your status message on AIM changes, you will be prompted for your Twitter username and password. You can prevent this from happening by installing the plugin, signing on to the AIM client, choosing the Actions button at the bottom of the Buddy List, and selecting “Set Your Status.” Enter in your Twitter credentials, and you will be all set to go.

You can follow along my twitter feed and all the happenings at SXSW and beyond here.

AIM on the iPhone

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Backing up yesterday’s major Open AIM announcement, today during the iPhone SDK press conference, we announced an AIM application for the iPhone. The demo at the press conference is a prototype, and we are very excited to be working with Apple on this. A quick quote from the press conference:

Switch between active chats by swiping left and right (applause), status update panel (“Playing Spore!”, giggles), choosing photos from your iPhone photo library as your AIM buddy pic.

Here are a few pics, thanks to my fellow AOL/TWX employees at Engadget.

Stats for Your Open AIM Apps

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In the launch post of Open AIM, I mentioned one of the major improvements was a facelift to the Open AIM Developer Web site. Previously developers had no idea what kind of usage their web app, plugin, client or bot had, unless they built it themselves.

We have corrected this problem. Now client and web app keys will see peak simultaneous users, cumulative sessions, IMs sent and IMs received. Developers of plugins will be able to see stats for peak simultaneous usage and cumulative session count. Developers already with keys in the Open AIM program will start seeing their stats being collected.

By having these stats available any time the owner of the key loads their key management page, they can get a great idea of how users are using the application. Stats are available only to the key owner, and are protected by the identity and password of the key owner. Remember that all keys are now unlimited, so there is no need to recompile applications with a deployment key prior to release. If you already have keys set up for your applications, they have automatically been made unlimited. Here is a screenshot of the key managment page.

Thoughts on the launch and our partners

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I have gotten about 2.5 hours of sleep over the past 40+ hours. The launch today was a couple months in the making and really there are so many people to thank. So rather than give an “Oscar-like acceptance speech” (pun intended) where the band plays me off the stage, let me just say, “THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO WORKED ON GETTING OPEN AIM 2.0 OUT THE DOOR.”

The launch today included two partners that I wanted to take a minute to highlight. We are excited to welcome Seth and the rest of the gang at Meebo into the developer program and we look forward to helping Meebo continue to evolve their client on top of the OSCAR protocol. In the case of eBuddy, we are really happy to add an international partner to the program, especially since we have removed the international clause in the license agreement. eBuddy has been around since 2003 and is based in the Netherlands.

Over the next couple of days I will keep blogging about the program and some other cool things happening around Open AIM at SXSW. Until then, I am going to get a good night sleep for the first time in a few weeks. 🙂

Open AIM 2.0

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Over two years ago we launched Open AIM by releasing the Windows Software Development Kit that allowed developers to write custom clients, bots and plugins for the Windows AIM client. Since March 2006, we have released SDKs for the Mac, Linux and PocketPC platforms, as well as AIM Web APIs that allowed developers to build AIM onto websites via embeddable widgets, javascript, or XML.

Today we are adding more exciting ways of integrating and leveraging the AIM network. First, we are documenting the AIM protocol, known as OSCAR. Doing this will allow clients built using libraries such as libPurple, and other open source solutions to be enhanced to take advantage of all our protocol. Second, we are simplifying our license agreement, and removing restrictions to allow you to create the applications you and your users want. For example, we will now allow developers to build clients that incorporate other Instant Messaging services, using our SDKs, protocols and libraries. Third, we will allow developers to build compelling mobile applications for all different mobile devices. Fourth, we are removing limitations on developers from building business and enterprise applications. Fifth, AIM Web APIs now support php and AMF3 return formats for easier server and flash integration. Lastly, we are giving our developer website a huge face lift. On the new site, you will find better message boards, easier to navigate documentation and samples, and additional APIs that AOL has to offer. For developers the new website also will include some basic statistics of your application, plugin or bot.

After listening to you, the Open AIM Developer Community, we have also streamlined the process of building applications, plugins and bots. In the past we required developers of custom client applications, plugins and bots to provide a key and fingerprint to get their application authenticated on to the AIM network. We have simplified this by making the fingerprint check optional. In addition, all keys have unlimited usage. For the AIM Web APIs we are removing the requirement for URL referrer checks, which also means fewer hurdles to develop applications and makes for a better user experience.

By further opening up the AIM developer program, we are providing a better experience for all our users whether they are using the flagship Windows AIM client or Meebo in a Firefox browser. At the same time, we are giving developers the opportunity to build applications using best in breed tools and protocol. In order to best support these efforts and ensure that our users receive a high-quality AIM experience, we do require that developers include some specific elements in their applications. However, we have done our best to keep these requirements to a minimum, resulting in greater flexibility for developers and an enhanced AIM experience for their users. We have created a list, from which developers can pick a minimum of 2 items to integrate into their Web AIM or Custom Client application. The list includes:
– displaying advertising
– providing a link to installing the AIM Toolbar
– displaying a users expression/buddy icon as well as providing a link to letting the user set their expression
– displaying a user’s buddy info
– displaying the AIM Startpage

Developers can change out these items as they determine what best suits the needs of their users and their application. We will be adding new options to the list to further increase the flexibility available to the developer, and in the near-term will be adding other beneficial enhancements such as a revenue-share program for displayed advertising.

In conclusion, over the past two years we have seen tremendous growth and excitement over the Open AIM program, and today is just another step in giving developers the best messaging and synchronous communication platform in the world to build on. We know that for our users this change will continue to give them the choice in deciding what is the best AIM experience for them.

Latest OS X Update and iChat

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Apple recently released a system update for Mac OS X 10.5.2. Included in this release are a bunch of improvements for iChat that impact AIM.

  • Addresses an issue with simultaneously-logged in accounts in which iChat sounds generated from one account might be heard in another account.
  • Fixes an issue in which iChat idle time is affected by Time Machine backups.
  • Improves connectivity when running iChat behind a router that doesn’t preserve ports.
  • Enables logged chats from previous versions of iChat to open faster and more reliably.
  • Addresses an issue with text chats in which users may be unable to receive messages from the sender.
  • Addresses an issue that may prevent rejoining an AIM chat room without reopening iChat.
  • Addresses video chat compatibility issues with AIM 6 and third-party routers.
  • Fixes an issue with case-sensitivity of AIM handles.

Video interop between AIM and iChat should be much improved, check it out.  Here is the full change log.

Thoughts on Microhoo…

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Its been a little quiet from me in the past month as we are working real hard on writing code.  There is a lot of exciting stuff happening in the AIM world, and you guys will start seeing it in the near future.  In the meantime, I thought I would pontificate on the MSFT/YHOO merger and what it means from an instant messaging/social network point of view.  MSFT/YHOO already have inter operable messaging clients, and the success or failure of the move is debatable.  Due to MSFT’s sheer number of employees working on client development, one must believe that the Live Messenger client will be the one to survive.  I question really how this looks to the end user at the end of the day.  The reason being, that where Yahoo IM is huge, Live is not and vice versa.  Do they still skin a version of the IM client one for Live, one for Yahoo?  It would be very weird where one day if you are a Yahoo user you no longer sign into the client with the Yahoo name space.

It will be interesting to see if this deal really does close.  As MSFT’s stock loses value it makes the deal less attractive to YHOO shareholders.  In the 12-18 months this deal will take to close, AIM/ICQ and others will continue to execute our plan of record.  Lastly, it has been said by many, but combining two companies as big as MSFT and YHOO and getting the synergies right, is a HUGE challenge.