This morning we published AIM Vote ’08 to the gallery, so get out there and make it known who you are voting for. The vote total dynamically updates, so you can see in real time the results.
And next week go from the virtual AIM voting booth to the real voting booth, make your voice count.
Last week we launched the latest AIM 6.9 beta, so I am a week late posting on this, as I was away last week. We have changed the UI to be more graphical in nature and given users back some space on their buddy list.
But in the better late than never category, here is the change log:
You can download AIM 6.9 Beta 2 here.
As always feedback is appreciated.
This morning we just pushed live a new beta AIM client for the Mac. You can check out all the details here, but needless to say we are excited to share this application with you. This builds on our commitment to developing software for Apple hardware, whether it be AOL on Desktop, AOL Radio or the AIM iPhone app. Here are some of the features for client:
AIM for Mac is built on top of the Open AIM platform, using the Mac SDK.
As always we appreciate feedback.
Going on vacation with the family and having no internet accessibility is always a challenge. Awaiting my return was about 1000+ email I had to catch up on, then there were all my feeds to read, I also could not prepare adequately for my fantasy football draft this week which could hamper my fun over the next 18 weekends.
Apparently we did a whole bunch of releases while I was gone, so for now I will just post a summary, and get into more details in follow up posts.
I will dive into details on these releases over the next few days.
Download AIM MusicLink version 4.0.0.0 here.
I have just posted the latest version of AIM MusicLink, version 4.0.0.0. As always you can get the latest information on AIM MusicLink via the AIM MusicLink homepage. I have made many significant changes in this latest version based on feedback from people as well as some long standing features I wanted to add.
Here is the change log:
AIM MusicLink works on all versions of AIM 6.0+, but official support for this version is for AIM 6.8+. AIM Music Link Supports the following players.
This release is a major one, so enjoy it. Download AIM MusicLink version 4.0.0.0 here.
As I mentioned earlier today, we launched AIM for the iPhone in the Apple AppStore. This evening TechCrunch posted the top 10 download apps list and AIM comes in at number 2 with over 12K downloads. The number 1 app is Remote, which was written by Apple to control your iTunes and Apple TV. I firmly believe real-time messaging applications will be huge on this phone because of the fees that AT&T intends to charge for SMS. As people migrate to these messaging apps, I think people will see the short comings of SMS. Here is the top downloads list.
The lines are forming fast and furious at Apple and AT&T stores all across the world and anticipation has reached a furor pitch for the 3G iPhone tomorrow. But, not wanting to trump tomorrow’s excitement, Apple released iTunes 7.7 that has AppStore support (AIM MusicLink works with iTunes 7.7) and with the iPhone SDK 2.0 posted this morning, apps can now be downloaded and installed!
We have posted the AIM client that we first debuted on stage at the iPhone SDK launch back in March. The client has been improved with some really cool features new to the AIM client, including gestures to start new messages and switch between conversations, as well as the ability to use the iPhone camera to take a picture and make the picture your buddy icon. A bunch of people asked how we wrote the client, and the answer is that we used our Open AIM Web APIs to write this client. The client is free and available on the AppStore now.
Techcrunch wrote this morning about a Vivaty plugin that was written for AIM. The same plugin was also written for Facebook’s platform. Vivaty Scenes was one of the plugins that launched in June when we released AIM 6.8 and AIM Modules. First, I want to say it was nice that Techcrunch gave OpenAIM some love, as some of our apps and plugins rival the usage of the most popular Facebook or MySpace apps. AIM as a platform sometimes flies under the radar of the blogosphere, but it is the only synchronous real-time communication platform that allows the building of your own applications as well as application hosting and sharing of our social graph via the AIM Buddy List.
With regards to Vivaty Scenes, their app is hosted in the AIM Buddy List as an AIM Module (AMO). Their app is currently in beta, and requires XP or Vista with IE6+. You can download the AIM Module from the AIM Gallery.
Happy Monday everyone! I am posting the latest version of AIM MusicLink that contains support for a new media player as well as a couple of fixes for some old bugs. In AIM MusicLink 3.0.0.0, I have added support for XM Player version 3.4.2.1+. MusicLink now has support for 8 different media players. The full list can be found on the AIM MusicLink home page.
I have also fixed two bugs that have been around for a while. ITunes would report the current song even if the player was paused or stopped. MusicLink will only set an ITunes song if the player is playing a song now. The other bug that I fixed involved Windows Media Player. People were reporting that WMP songs were getting set in their AIM Status even when WMP was not running. I have fixed an issue where if the player exits the WMP plugin was reporting the wrong information. If WMP crashes, which does happen, MusicLink may still report the incorrect information.
A post on Silicon Alley two days ago regarding AT&T’s different iPhone plans caught my attention. Dan Frommer, writes that AT&T is “screwing its customers by not offering a text message plan in between their 200/$5 and 1500/$15.” But this is not a problem since there will be “a handful of instant messaging apps” released on the 11th.
The iPhone which, without doubt, has moved the ball down the field as far as smartphones are concerned, I believe is about to change the way all of us do real time synchronous communication via our mobile device. Since most if not all people will have unlimited data with the iPhone, it makes more sense to use a messaging client rather than pay per SMS. Messaging clients bring with it, presence, rich-text messages, user customization, such as status, avatars, etc, a familiar experience, and most importantly the ability to do advanced features like photo sharing and file transfer, both of which cannot be done via MMS since it is not supported on the iPhone right now.
SMS is not going away over night, but the iPhone will make it more attractive to NOT use SMS because the IM clients for the phone will be very good. I am looking forward to seeing what RIM and Android can churn out to keep up. As I wrote yesterday, here at AOL, we have a very nice AIM client for the Windows Mobile Platform.
