Tag Archives: Open AIM

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.

New Year’s Treat…AIM.app for the Mac

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Happy New Year everyone, and today we have some exciting news to go along with the new year. The AIM Lite team has been hard at work on various different projects, and we’re proud to announce a preview version of our favorite — AIM.app.

Download AIM.app for Mac

This is a native Mac AIM client with a large feature set. It’s made for Mac users, by Mac users, and I think you are all going to like it.  This client is used by the Open AIM development team to test the API.  AIM Lite is the test client we use on the Windows side of the house.  Much like MFC Buddy whose source code is shipped inside the Windows SDK and is available via the AIM Gallery, AIM.app’s source code is available in the Mac SDK.  As always you can download all of our SDKs and read all about our API on http://developer.aim.com.

This is the first public release of the client — but for those Mac developers out there you can see old versions in source at the OpenAIM developer website here. You can also see full release notes here.

AIM.app also supports plugins! Try out KidIM, which allows parents to setup a simple IM environment for kids. Try that our here

As always, we thrive on feedback. Just like in the windows version of AIM Lite, please send us feedback via the AIM.app Help menu.

Here are the screenshots:

Mashup Help

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I am a big proponent of mashups, both in music and in technology. In music, nothing beats a great rock anthem mixing it up with some hip-hop, ala Jay-Z and Linkin Park years ago. In the technology world, taking two things that were not designed to go together, and make it work, is actually kind of cool. To make Flickr work with AIM is definitely something we never had intended. In fact mashing up a COM based API and make it work with Javascript is very “Frankenstein-ish, no way engineers at Microsoft thought about that when they started writing COM/ATL years ago.”

Those who have followed my blog and what I am doing on AIM, and AOL knows that I have written a lot of code that mashes up not only AOL properties but other stuff out on the web. I have sporadically shared my code with you on the old blog, and now I want to give everyone a better access to the stuff I have written. I have set up a page where you can view the code I have written and some tutorials I have given. You can check out the page here. Use the code as a reference to help build mashups of your own with AIM and the AIM network. I will be adding some samples up on the website in the near future.

Tiny Buddy version 3.20 and AIM Fight Widget

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One of the most common question I get is what are we doing with operating systems other than Windows. Most people know that the AIM core platform that my team writes is cross platform, in other words it works on Mac, Linux, and Windows Mobile operating system, and of course Windows. Even better from a cross-platform point-of-view are the Web AIM APIs, which will work everywhere.

With this in mind here are two Apple related releases to check out. The first one, TinyBuddy, is not new, but definitely a helpful little application for iPhone and iPodTouch to send quick IMs to people without incurring the SMS charges. The latest TinyBuddy version 3.20, has the following improvements:

  • Better performance for large buddy lists.
  • One less prompt on sign-in and first IM sent.
  • Better status message display (previously it did not show status messages, just away messages).
  • Better information if you are signed off because Mobile Safari suspended the page for too long (happens if you switch to another application or web page).
  • Uses Dojo 1.0 for the JavaScript toolkit.

You can check out TinyBuddy here: http://x.aim.com/ty/

Last week there was an article written by John Fronckowiak, about how he built a Mac OS X Dashboard Widget for AIM Fight. Using the AIM Fight interface John built a very slick widget that not only allows you to easily fight other SNs but also shows fighting history. Check it out here: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/aimfight.html

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.