Author Archives: Greg C.

About Greg C.

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

New TwitterMan and Colorizer is Fixed!

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I am releasing a new version of TwitterMan version 3.0 that works seemlessly in AIM 6.5. The widget, will listen for when your status updates in the AIM 6.5 client, and if you are authenticated to Twitter, will automatically update with the new status. If you are not authenticated, then the plugin will prompt you for Twitter authentication, then store the credentials for the lifetime of the session. The widget can be downloaded here, and as always feedback is appreciated. This plugin works with AIM 6.5 and better.

Many people have been pinging me this week asking why the Colorizer plugin stopped working. Well we hit the monthly rate limit on the key, which happens to be 2 Million sessions. So first thanks to everyone who is using colorizer, and second, the key is now unlimited so we should not have any more issues with it. For those who are wondering what Colorizer is, it is a plugin written by Justin Uberti back in 2005 when he and I were building JAMS (which were a suite of plugins that we wrote to test the OpenAIM API). Colorizer changes your out going IM text to appear as different colors to your buddies. Each IM results in a different color being sent.

Meez + AIM = Super Expressions

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Recently we partnered with Meez to hook us up with some cool 3D avatars and expressions that build on the WeeMee experience we have in AIM. Check out aim.meez.com to create your avatar. If you want to snag my Meez avatar you can do so by downloading my SnagExp plugin, and snag it from gregtest3 when I am online. Here is what my finished Meez looked like:

And here is my Meez avatar in the IM window:

Some quick requirements:

  • AIM 6.5
  • Java 1.3.1
  • Flash 7+
  • IE 6+

As always feedback is appreciated.

Mashup Camp Dublin

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Facing jet lag and two presentations, one on Open AIM and one on Open Auth, I really debated just staying in bed all day. I did definitely get out of bed and headed to the Guinness Storehouse to see how Europe handles the Mashup world. John Herren opened the proceedings by explaining Mashup culture and how to get started. John is the Mashup king, he won the competition in Boston earlier this year. John Musser from Programmable Web gave the keynote yesterday afternoon and dove into how the Social Media API world is exploding with new APIs on a daily basis. While heavily pimping OpenSocial, he managed to give props to others like AIM for leading the way in the messaging API world.

In my two sessions I covered the client side of Open AIM by showing how easy it is to make a plugin, and some excellent examples out there today. In addition I showed how all messaging clients are built off of Open AIM, whether it be accsample included in our SDK, or AIM Lite or AIM 6.5, at their heart they all start off the same way. I also managed to squeeze in some time to show off AIM Tunes, and was successful in streaming U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name (apropos for Dublin, since street signs are non-existent) from my computer in Bethesda, Maryland across the Atlantic over conference WiFi in the Guinness Storehouse. Needless to say, that demo got a round of applause.

Since we are at the most famous brewery in all of the world, we were given free Guinness and a trip to the top of the factory for beers at the Gravity Bar and a view of Dublin. Coming up today is a presentation by fellow AIM-er Stephen Benedict where he will talk about Open AIM via the Web AIM APIs.

Gravity Bar @ Guinness Storehouse

Gravity Bar @ The Guinness Storehouse

Presenting on Open AIM Bots

Presenting on Open AIM Bots

Thoughts from across the pond.

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I am over in Dublin for the weekend to give a couple of presentations at MashupCamp, and to do a presentation at our AOL offices. If you are in the Dublin area or at the conference make sure to stick around until after lunch, have a beer, and come listen to a talk about Open AIM and OpenAuth.

I already see there is some feedback on the latest AIM MusicLink I released on Thursday, and I have tried reproducing a few of the issues reported. Namely that iTunes 7.5 results in the song playing not appearing in your status or profile. I downloaded iTunes 7.5.0.20 and with the latest AIM MusicLink and the latest AIM client, I had no issues. I am planning on looking at Windows Media Player 11 to see if something broke, but again it is an API that SHOULD be backward compatible. Make sure you are setting your preferences, and that you are not setting yourself as away, and everything should be working.

I will be posting my presentations from today on the blog later today so check back tomorrow and they will be up there. In addition, I have added some of my older presentations from 2006 to page, so if you want to see what was going on back then, you can now reference them.

New AIM MusicLink

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UPDATE 6/9/08 11:00PM EST – The latest AIM MusicLink can be found at the home of AIM MusicLink. (http://www.gregsmind.com/musiclink)

I finished up a new version of AIM MusicLink version 2.0.0.4 last night based on feedback I was getting on the previous release. In version 2.0.0.4, I have added support for MediaMonkey, so AIM MusicLink now supports 7 different media players:

  • iTunes
  • WinAmp (version 5.5)
  • Windows MediaPlayer (version 10+)
  • Yahoo Jukebox
  • Real Player
  • Songbird (must manually install included extension)
  • MediaMonkey

I have also fixed a few bugs. First the situation of the first character being cut off. I had real trouble reproducing a case where I saw this, but I figured during streaming of music to WinAmp or Yahoo is where this would occur. In addition I fixed a problem where your status could be set to “[Buffering…” if you were listening to AIM Tunes songs in WinAmp. I also added an “About” screen via the new IAccCommand flag AccCommandFlag_AboutUi.

Here is the new about screen:

To access the preferences click the actions menu as shown and choose “AIM MusicLink Preferences”

Once you set the preferences you will start seeing your status and profile updated like this:

You can download the plugin here and as always I appreciate any feedback you guys have.

Open AIM 1.5

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We posted Open AIM 1.5 today on developer.aim.com. This new update represents the same Open AIM engine that AIM 6.5 launched with earlier this month. Here are some of the changes we have made from Open AIM 1.3, the full release notes can be found here:

  • In the Java Wrapper we updated to current AIMCC APIs.
  • Support for sub menu plugin commands, so now you can have a plugin command menu item that is a fly out. (Note that the AIM 6.5 client will be adding this support in the next release, so you will not see sub menus until that release.)
  • Added a new property for user and session called AvTrack. This property is used for extended info for the current video or audio track that is playing in your media player.
  • In addition to the property we added for AvTrack, we added an interface for the AvTrack so you can pass up the data easily to the host.

As always the SDK contains plenty of samples and our documentation is live on the web here. If you have questions or feedback you can leave them on our message boards.

Are We Still Doing AIM Betas?

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The most popular question I have been getting lately has been regarding AIM Betas and whether we will be releasing betas in the future. I guess it has been made known that some members of our beta team were impacted by last month’s changes. In my 8+ years working on AIM we always have done betas and I can assure you this will continue. We will still be getting your feedback via the usual channels, beta.aol.com, my blog, forums, and Report-A-Bug. In fact we are working on a release right now, and it will makes it way out the door very soon. I encourage everyone if they have questions to leave comments below or send me an IM using AIM Wimzi on the right side of the screen. Next week we will have some Open AIM news. Have a great weekend, and enjoy Super Bowl 41.5 tomorrow.

TopCoder Studio Design Competition

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TopCoder is a company that provides coding competitions and contests for both developers and designers. On AIM we have been using them for a few projects over the past year. We announced this fall a new competition that is part of the TopCoder Studio for the public to help design 24 AIM Icons. Of course there is a money prize, and the winner will get to have their icons seen by 30+ million unique users per month. The contest runs until November 13th.

Happy Halloween

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For a while people have been asking me for access to the presentations I have done over the years. Well, they were posted internally at AOL for the past few months, but now that I have the new blog, I am posting them publicly. You will find all the talks I have given here in 2007. You will notice that I will also be taking all the code samples that I posted on the old blog here and the plugins link will point to the AIM Gallery. To find this page later, there is a link in my blog roll section.

One thing that I have not blogged about but definitely deserves some attention is AIM Tunes. We included a plugin in the AIM 6.5 release we did at the beginning of the month that allows you to you to listen to music from your buddies. It’s as simple as that. Check out http://x.aim.com/music for more information! We put together a little tutorial to show you how easy it is to use. From a technical perspective, the plugin takes advantage of AIM’s Open API using IAccCustomSession interface. As always we love to get the feedback from you guys on how we are doing.

AIM Call-Out

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Now available for all AIM users is a new feature entitled AIM Call Out. We have made it easier than ever to make phone calls to phone numbers all over the world; 200 countries in fact. Instead of paying a monthly fee, AIM Call Out allows you to pay as you go. Rates vary from country to country, and you need AIM 6.5 to use AIM Call Out. Of course calling either audio or video from one AIM client to another AIM client (PC-to-PC) is still free. We even have partnered up with a couple of headset manufactures to provide high quality audio output devices. I actually have been using it on my trip here in Tel Aviv and think the quality and ease to use is great.

Speaking of Israel here is a picture I took today watching the sunset on the beach.

Sunset in Tel Aviv