Tag Archives: Open AIM 2.0

My Cricket Bot

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For my trip to India I decided I would write a bot that can return the latest Cricket News, Scores and Cricket videos via Truveo Video Search. This is super important today as India is in a test with South Africa. Of course I have no understanding of cricket, though the employees here in BDC are definitely watching closely. The bot was written in C-Sharp, which I maintain as the best way to write a bot. The reason being, you have full access to the Open AIM API, you do not have to worry about deploying the .net framework with the bot, and with C-Sharp you get easy to write code with auto complete via Visual Studio. The bot code is posted here for everyone to check out.

Blogging from Banaglore

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This week I am at our Bangalore Development Center working with all the great people here. I was part of an American Idol style Innovation Competition judging great innovative applications developed and created by engineers, testers, and even project managers.  Hopefully we will see some of these innovations up on the AIM Gallery very soon.  I also have been presenting to the teams out here about how we built the Open AIM APIs and what Open AIM 2.0 is all about. India is truly an amazing place, the people are friendly, the traffic and riding in the car is super scary, and development is happening at a break-neck pace.

Here are few pictures from the trip. Tomorrow I will share a bot I worked on specially for the Bangalore office.

New Java Bot Sample Code

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We will constantly update sample code and projects instead of just waiting for SDK or Web API releases. In the past couple of days we posted on the developer website a full fledge bot written in Java. The bot is capable of communicating with LDAP, MySql, Oracle and Google SOAP API. There are two versions of the program, one which includes access to Google SOAP API for search and spell capabilities and the other which does not include that because apparently if you don’t have an API key now, you may not be able to get one (Google SOAP API). This bot uses an Open AIM development key, and takes advantage of the AIM SDK API. This may be the best example of how to write a bot I have seen for AIM, that is fully documented.

Here is a screen shots of the bot in action:

You can view the entire bot summary here. You can view all our source code here.

Bebo and ILoveIM

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Continuing the momentum of last weeks Open AIM announcement and the AIM on iPhone announcement, this week we shared with the world, the purchase of Bebo. After spending time in the UK and Ireland late last year and seeing all the Bebo users over there I am really excited to welcome them into the family.

One clear thing we hear from our users is that they want ways to do synchronous communication via tools other than the AIM client. Anonymous IM via the Wimzi widget and online presence are very important to users of social networks.

This provides a nice segue to ILoveIM.com. This web messenger application incorporates Open AIM and provides a tab interface for different services. They are actively working on building more AIM services into the application.

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.

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. 🙂