Tag Archives: AIM

AIM 6.8 is Live

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Today we launched the best AIM client ever. I say this, and I really mean it. I have been working on AIM since AIM 2.5 in 1999, and I can confidently say we got this client right. AIM 6.8 builds upon the themes of Open AIM of giving users what they want by customizing the AIM experience via a new type of plugin called AIM Modules. I will have a follow up post getting into further details on what an AIM Module is.

AIM 6.8 also supports C++, C#, and VB plugins just like previous clients, so AIM Tunes and AIM MusicLink will still work.

AIM 6.8 also gives users the ability to import or export their Buddy List, a feature that had been a plugin I wrote years ago is now part of the client.

One last thing to point out we have made the black skin on the AIM the new default skin. All the old ones are still there in case you want to switch it up.

Graphing Social Patterns East

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Graphing Social Patterns Conference 2008 As a lonely nation’s eyes turn toward Moscone Center West where Apple is holding their developer’s conference, a smaller conference is flying under the radar here in Washington, DC. Granted most web 2.0 developers would not consider DC to be a natural choice for a conference on social networking, and considering my life is spent going back and forth from San Jose and Dulles, I definitely experience the west coast bias.

This week the Graphing Social Patterns – East conference is being held. This conference is a follow up to the one that was held the first week of March in San Diego and it brings together the top social networking minds and companies. What makes this different of course is the venue. Being on the east coast and particularly in Washington DC, is it possible we will be introducing a more bureaucratic spin to social networks? We know the Federal Government already blogs, but will they twitter or have an open social app, maybe after this conference they will?

Its not all about the desktop for social networking either. After today’s iPhone announcement, social networking on mobile devices will become even more prevalent. This is just one of the topics to be discussed tomorrow at the conference, and yours truly will be up there debating the current and future landscape of social networking via an ever changing mobile world.

Hopefully I will see everyone out there, stop by the AOL booth to pick up some AIM swag too.

Welcome to the AIM MusicLink Home

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After all the feedback and comments that I have gotten over the years regarding MusicLink, I thought I would put together a web page for the plugin. This web page will explain what AIM MusicLink does, all the versions ever released including the change log for each release, and how AIM MusicLink actually works. I even included code samples on how it works for C++, C#, VB, and even Javascript.

You can check out the AIM MusicLink Home here.

A couple of plugin updates

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AIM MusicLink was updated this afternoon. When I fixed the Songbird plugin issue I accidentally packaged an old version of the AIM MusicLink dll, so this is now fixed. You can download AIM MusicLink version 2.2.0.0 here. The latest version of AIM MusicLink will display a music note in the status message and has support for over a half dozen different music players.

I have also updated the AIM Stats plugin so when all the stats are expanded you will get a scroll bar. AIM Stats can be downloaded here. I will be adding more stats over the next couple of weeks.

Witness the Core

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Debugging AIM plugins is always a challenge. If you are writing a plugin for Windows AIM clients that are C++, C# or VB or what we call native plugins, you simply attach the Visual Studio.net debugger (ctrl-alt-p) is the shortcut key combo, to AIM 6.8. Place your breakpoints in your project and you are all set to debug. For developers writing simple plugins using javascript like plugins via AIM Widget development, debugging requires breaking into JScript.

To be honest, this sucks if the all you are looking to do is peak into the way the Open AIM APIs work and maybe see why your plugin is not getting events. CoreWitness is just the plugin to make your life suck less. It gives you the ability to trigger specific events or dumps properties of objects in Open AIM.

The plugin was written in C++ and has the nice feature of self checking for updates, so as we add new objects or events to the Open AIM API, you will be the first to know. As I say, sometimes the best plugins are the utilities that let you see how we are doing things on AIM.

Download CoreWitness here.

Get AIM Stats and be an imFreaq

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We have posted a couple more plugins today to the AIM Gallery that are fun little utilities. The first is a plugin that was written by Gus, called IM Freaqs, that will show you the buddies that you interact with the most. You can easily launch an IM Window from this plugin by clicking on the screen name. IM Freaqs will show you the frequency score, online state (away, online, offline, etc) and buddy icon of each user. We are using the Open AIM API to get a user’s frequency score via AccUserProp_Frequency. This is the same API that was used to create the Google Desktop Gadget.

The other plugin called AIM Stats allows you to view a few different stat categories. You can now view how close you are to the maximum buddy list size as well as group maximum. AIM Stat will also show you how many IMs you have sent and received during the session.

Both plugins require AIM 6.8 Beta 3. You can download the AIM 6.8 Beta client here.

Download IM Freaqs here.

Download AIM Stats here.

Open AIM Developer Contest Results

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When we launched Open AIM 2.0 in March we announced a contest being run through TopCoder that was part of the launch where AIM gave away $100,000 in prizes, and some t-shirts along the way. We saw dozens of really top notch submissions and judging them was no easy task.

Last week at the Top Coder Open in Las Vegas we announced the winners, the top 9 got to split the $10,000 each while 20 runners up got $500 each. Winning submissions ranged from whiteboarding plugins to an IM translation tool to a viral video sharing web site via web AIM APIs.

Here is the winners list:

  • IM Remote – Screen to screen desktop sharing over AIM.
  • IM Loud: This plugin reads IMs out loud to the user.
  • IM Whiteboard: Use AIM as a whiteboard and simultaneously draw with buddies.
  • LinkPreview: Thumbnail link previews when hovering over a link sent to you in chat.
  • Free2IM: Provides automatic, on-the-fly language translation back and forth over IM.
  • Infomess: Chat and share videos at the same time.
  • Share-A-Map: Share and collaboratively edit MapQuest maps. Giving someone directions will never be the same…
  • PopsChat: Bound to score points with TopCoder users, this plugin brings AIM chat and features to the TopCoder Arena (a chat and messaging area).
  • FeedReader: An RSS feedreader for AIM.

Congrats to all the winners. AOL is actively running a competition right now with TopCoder, this time for developers wanting to build video search applications via Truveo APIs.

AIM Express 7.0 Beta

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Today we are launching a new version of AIM Express. This version, 7.0 is a beta and is built on top of the Open AIM WimAS3 library that we released back in March as part of the Open AIM 2.0 announcement. This Adobe Flash based application allows you to use AIM any where you have an internet connection and not have to worry about downloading the full AIM 6.8 client.

As we posted on the beta website…

Although this application will work with most versions of Adobe® Flash® 9, we highly recommend you upgrade to the most recent version of Flash, as older versions have a serious security flaw. The upgrade is available here.

Check out AIM Express 7.0 Beta here.

Let us know what you think of AIM Express 7.

New TwitterMan for AIM 6.8 Beta

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I posted a new version of TwitterMan for AIM 6.8 Beta 3. This plugin was a collaboration between myself and one of my teammates, Gus.

This build will only work with the latest AIM 6.8 Beta or newer. For those unfamiliar with TwitterMan, this AIM plugin will set your status message on Twitter to the same status you have currently set on AIM. Recently Twitter added the ability to push your Twitter status to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, and others. So now TwitterMan will be able to propagate your AIM status from AIM to Twitter then to Facebook for example. The latest version will securely store your Twitter credentials so you do not have to enter them every time you sign into AIM. The latest version appears at the bottom of your buddy list where you can log into Twitter and manage your settings.

We will be making some improvements over time, including getting alerts when your Twitter Friend Feed has changed.

AIM 6.8 Beta 3

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Its been a little while since I blogged about our AIM 6.8 Windows client, but its not been for the lack of us doing work on the client. We have been really hard at work building, in my opinion, the best AIM client to date. Here is a snapshot of changes…

Look for changes to the way we display plugins at the bottom of your Buddy List® window. We’ve pulled them out from behind the control panel and now you can access them with just a click on the icon. Don’t miss the following updates as well:

 

  • Click the Get More link and browse our Featured Developers, Most Downloaded, and Most Recently Update plugins
  • Slide the curtain up to view more plugins
  • Click the Manage link to de-activate, uninstall plugins
  • AIM Call Out is back in this version
  • New plugins! Single/multiplayer games, synch your AIM and Twitter status messages, list of your most frequent IM buddies and more

We have also taken the BL-Ops plugin I wrote almost 3 years ago that allowed you to import or export your buddy list to a file, and made this plugin as part of the client. All users can now export your buddy list to load it on a separate PC or to share it with your friends.

This is a really exciting release, and I will have a follow up post over the weekend about this release.

Download AIM 6.8 Beta 3 here.