Tales of a Running Man

Juberti has signed off.

2006-10-07T20:58:00.000-07:00

It's been almost 10 years since I came to AOL, and almost 9 years since I started working on AIM. It's been a great ride, with a lot of great moments (especially Open AIM), but alas, today is my last day at AOL. I start Monday at Google's Kirkland, WA office.

I hope this blog was valuable - I had fun writing it (when I had time). For the latest AIM information, I highly recommend Greg's AIM blog; you should also check out the blogs of Justin2 and Gus from the AIM team.. If you really liked this particular blog... there will be a new blog at http://juberti.blogspot.com.

If you would like to keep in touch, you can look me up on LinkedIn, or email juberti at gmail dot com.

All the best,
Justin

The Forgotten Easter Egg

2006-10-06T23:29:00.000-07:00

When I first started working at AOL back in 1997, one of the things that I worked on was "aoltray.exe" for the AOL 4.0 software. aoltray didn't do too much, other than launch the AOL software, but it seemed like a clever place for an Easter egg. I discussed this concept with the product manager for AOL 4.0 (codenamed "Casablanca"), and he gave me the go-ahead to implement an easter egg. (It was the late 90's, when products like Word, Excel, and IE had elaborate easter eggs. But I digress).

So, I got together with a pair of artists and we came up with the idea of having the tray icon AOL logo split open, revealing a dancing running man, all set to a techno music score. The artists did the illustrations and the music, and I coded it up into the aoltray code. This shipped out in some of the AOL 4.0 beta builds, and we all thought it was pretty cool. Well, almost all of us.

Eventually somebody showed it to one of AOL's senior executives, who was most displeased with it. The exact reasons why he didn't like it were never known, but the message was sent down that this sort of tomfoolery was a fireable offense. My career at AOL could have been very short, but fortunately my management chain played dumb and didn't give up my name (thanks!).

Anyway - Jason, Erik, and I thought this thing was pretty cool, and it's a shame that only a few people ever saw it. So here it is, for your viewing pleasure. If you run this application, you'll see an AOL icon appear in your system tray. Hold down "A", "O", and "L", and double-click the icon. Then sit back and watch! (See the 3 screenshots to the left to get an idea of what happens. Note that this thing does play sound, so you might want to turn down the volume if you're in an office environment)

Update 10/07/2006 2:08 PM PDT:
Some people have reported that it doesn't work for them. I forgot, back when we originally did this we noted that some keyboards would not indicate properly that 'A', 'O', and 'L' were all being held down. So I have uploaded a new version, where you can just hold down Ctrl and double-click the AOL logo.
The entire app is contained in the EGGTRAY.exe file, which is only 43 K - to uninstall, just delete the file.
If you can't seem to get it to work, you can check out the (somewhat less cool) web version of the easter egg.

AIM ET (AKA AIM Lite)

2006-10-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

A few of us have been working on a new AIM client that demonstrates what you can do with the Open AIM SDK and the Boxely UI toolkit we've developed here at AOL. It's fast, light, and has some great features - including IM logging, SSL encryption of your communications, and support for plugins (including AIM Gadgets).

Check it out at the AOL Greenhouse - http://greenhouse.aol.com/prod.jsp?prod_id=27. New builds will be posted on a regular basis, so let us know what you think!

New AIM Gadgets 2.8 (AKA JAMS 2.8)

2006-09-06T19:20:00.000-07:00

A new version of AIM Gadgets (the plugins formerly known as JAMS) is out. This latest version, 2.8, has a number of small but important improvements. Greg did the tedious job of allowing individual installation of all 12 gadgets - so if you only want EzLogger and Colorizer, you don't have to install 10 other plugins you don't want. Greg also made some improvements to EZLogger, including adding a preference for where the logs are stored and fixing a bug with Unicode text display, and I fixed the issue that was keeping Colorizer from working properly with recent Triton builds.

SecurID/AOL Passcode plugin for Thunderbird

2006-08-28T08:17:00.000-07:00

Got wind of a new Thunderbird plugin today that makes using AIM Mail with SecurID/AOL Passcode much easier. Basically, it means you only have to enter your SecurID code one time a day as long as you keep Thunderbird open. Check it out at http://journals.aol.com/godwinbabu/tech/#Entry613

AIM SDK 1.1 Released

2006-06-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

Today we released the latest version of the Open AIM SDK, at http://developer.aim.com. Highlights of this release:
* AIM Bots - turn any screenname into a bot that has higher rate limits and cannot be warned
* AIM Location Services - see where your AIM buddies are in real life
* Improved support for AIM Talk voice calls
* Support for custom clients and bots on Mac OS X, Linux, and Pocket PC
* Support for custom clients and bots written in Java
* More sample code, including VB.NET and Java samples

Also, be sure to check out the stuff that people are building with the AIM SDK:

Plugins
AIM Gadgets (formerly known as JAMS)
AIM Location Plugin
Nalsoft IM Logger
AMIP-AIM
RX-Plugin

Custom Clients
AIM Triton
AIM Pro
Go PowerTools
imstar*
PCD Music Lounge
Super Computer International

PCD Lounge

2006-05-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

Some more cool Open AIM news - the startup Doppelganger just announced a new client called the PCD Lounge that lets you hang out and chat with people in a virtual nightclub, and it's integrated with AIM. There's nightclub lighting and kicking music going the whole time - definitely captures a club feel pretty well. Definitely worth checking out - but make sure you have a fast computer.

Here's a screenshot:

AOL Music Now Developer Site

2006-05-12T12:41:00.000-07:00

AOL's music download service, MusicNow, just went live with its developer site at http://developer.aolmusicnow.com. Using RSS, you can get all sorts of interesting feeds from the site - top songs, stats on a given artist, new releases - very interesting stuff. You can also make your own MusicNow playlists and listening history available as an RSS feed for others to consume. Here's mine...

AOL Greenhouse

2006-05-11T12:01:00.000-07:00

The AOL Greenhouse has officially launched. Greenhouse is a site where various employee-created apps, plugins, widgets, and other pieces of software that use AOL technology can be promoted for the world to see. Naturally, JAMS is one of the items available for download from the site.

Other Greenhouse submissions include an AIM Fight Dashboard widget and an RSS screensaver. Another neat feature of the site is its blogs section where you can find AOL employee bloggers and catch up on their recent posts.

Give the Greenhouse a look!

TopCoder Open 2006

2006-05-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the TopCoder Open 2006 finals in Las Vegas. For those unfamiliar with TopCoder events, they are computer programming competitions where contestants have to solve several programming problems in a fixed amount of time, usually around an hour. The problems can be quite difficult; I was eliminated in earlier rounds of the TCO 2006 after missing this problem:

You are given a NxN matrix M, where 1 <= N <= 50, and an integer k, where 1 <= k <= N. Write a function to determine the maximum possible trace value for a kxk submatrix S, created by taking any k rows and k columns from M. (The trace is the sum of the elements on S's main diagonal; the selected rows and columns are not necessarily contiguous.)

Anyway, the final rounds were quite dramatic, with the problems being tougher than ever, the elimination of some of the top seeds, and some close finishes in the rounds to select the competitors for the championship round. In the championship round, it came down to 8 competitors - mostly from Eastern Europe, with 1 each from China, Japan, and Australia.

"tomek" (from Poland) got out to an early lead by solving the 250-point problem (You are given two rectangular solids of arbitrary sizes; write a function to determine the minimal surface area of a box than can enclose them) in just over 5 minutes. However, "Petr" (from Russia) prevailed in the end by being the only competitor to solve the 1000-point problem (Given an array of cables connecting N points, where each cable has a quality Q and a cost C, select a subset of the cables such that all points are connected and the sum of the quality values over the sum of the cost values is maximal). Petr walked away with $20,000 for his efforts; he was also asked at the post-event press conference "What was the most important decision that you made during the competition that allowed you to win?" His answer, naturally, was "The most important decision that I made was choosing to solve the 1000-point problem correctly."

Below are some pictures I took during the competition. At first, it can seem a bit strange to think of programming as a spectator sport. TopCoder does an excellent job though, with multiple screens displaying the standings in real time and mirrored viewsof all the competitors screens so you can see how they are approaching the problems. When the competitors are this good, it is quite exciting to just watch them work.

More AIM SDK stuff

2006-04-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

Whoah! Kind of fell off the surface of the blogosphere for a bit, had a lot of distractions recently (more on that another time). Anyway, here are a couple quick news items regarding the AIM SDK:

After considerable customer feedback (see my previous post), we've clarified several ambiguous points in the AIM SDK license agreement, up at http://developer.aim.com/license.jsp. Specifically, we've addressed the use of the AIM SDK with open source software in Section 4, and modified the wireless restriction to exempt software running on a PC or using 802.11. Lastly, we've removed text which indicated that you must send us mail if you change the URL where your custom client or plugin is hosted; now you can just change it from the "Manage Keys" page.
The first AIM SDK plugin written by a third party developer that I have found is AMIP, which adds the song that you are currently listening to to your AIM profile. It's like JAMS's MyTunes, except AMIP supports many more music players. Worth checking out.
On the subject of JAMS, we now see over 100,000 people using JAMS every day. Thanks to all of you who have used JAMS and recommended it to friends.
Last, we are gearing up for our AIM SDK 1.1 release. There will be a lot of new goodies along with many bug fixes in this release. Look for it in the near future...

AIM SDK License Clarifications

2006-03-15T10:38:00.000-08:00

I have seen many posts ragging us for the language we have in the AIM SDK regarding what you can and cannot do. I agree that the language is confusing and overbearing in some parts, and often the legal text sends a message that is different than what we intended.

The next version of the EULA will have many of these things remedied, but until then, let me try to clear up some of the sticky issues. (Many of these questions were submitted in an email exchange that you can see here.)

If you have more questions about the license - or are still unhappy with terms in the license - please let me know so that I can try to clarify the issue, not just for you, but for everyone who reads this blog. This is the first effort of this type at AOL and we are still learning how to do this.

Keys, Name, URL
Q: Why is AOL using keys to control access to the API? I don't want to have to come beg AOL for a key!
A: Anyone can get a key. You don't have to "apply", you just go to our webpage
and click a link. We don't vet the keys in any way, you just click and boom you have a development and deployment key. You can deploy your software, sell your software, have up to 250,000 users of your plugin/client per day - all completely for free. All we ask is that once you exceed that limit (as you start to approach 1% of our userbase, and potentially start consuming nontrivial network resources) you come discuss a business arrangement with us.

For those still unconvinced, Google is doing the exact same thing for access to the Google family of web services. It allows the network operator to know who is using the network, and prevent people from abusing the network (spam, malware, etc).

Lastly, many have asked "I don't know what to put in when for the name/URL fields when applying for a key". The name and URL are intended to allow us to help us monitor the network, by allowing us to get more information about your plugin or client. If you are still in the development phase, and don't know what to put for these fields - you can just make something up for now - you can go back and change it later.

Open Source
Q: Section 4 (viii)(about "Publicly Available Software") seems to be the subject ofdebate. Some think that it forbids the use of *any* open source codewith theSDK, including well-understood licenses that are not "viral".The GPL is notoriously problematic, but I think others (like the MITlicense) should be okay.

A: We encourage the use ofopen-source code with the SDK. The only prohibition is that you cannotwrite code with a license that would require AOL to open source theSDK. I think the GPL is the only license that has this issue (since youcannot link to closed-source libraries); LGPL, BSD, and MIT should befine.

We will try to make this absolutely clear in the next EULA. We are very supportive of open source - we use several best-of-breed open source technologies in the AIM SDK (libexpat, zlib, NSS, and sipXtapi).

Wireless
Q: The definitions for wireless use seem very broad. I think the most
worrisome part is:
offeror enable a service or functionality not authorized in writing by AOLthat utilizes a wireless telecommunication carrier's network and/orwireless services.
This seems to extend to computers using a wireless internet connection. Three cases come to mind:

802.11 networks operated by wireless telecommunication carriers (e.g. T-Mobile Hot Spot)
802.11 networks using internet access provided by a wireless telecommunication carrier (e.g. a wireless router and a DSL line)
TDMA, CDMA, GSM, etc. networks, using a computer, not a mobile device (e.g. Verizon data service using a PCMCIA card)

A: I agree this is very poorly worded. This is onlyintended to apply to software running on mobile phones usingTDMA/CDMA/GSM.

PCs/PDAs using 802.11 are not affected by this.

Deployment
You may not deploy or distribute your Custom Client to any third party.
Q:This appears to extend to distributions that do not include a key or(distributable parts of) the SDK itself (e.g. source code).

A:This is from the section where it discusses "Development keys". Theintent is that plugins built with "development" keys (as opposed to"deployment" keys) should not be distributed to end-users in binaryform (mainly since the 500-user limit will prevent your plugin fromworking properly for most users). If you are distributing source, youmay include a "development" key in the source - we do this in thesample applications provided in the SDK.

Distribution Limitations
from a fixed HTML website located at a publicly available fixed URL
Q:Theterms "fixed HTML website" and "fixed URL" seem to potentiallyproblematic. Many pages are dynamically generated and mirroringrequires redirection.

A: This just means, you can giveus a URL, that if we follow it, we can get to a site that has moreinformation about your plugin. The "fixed" language is just a way ofsaying that if we go to your URL, we should not get a 404.

VON Conference

2006-03-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

Greg and I are in San Jose for the VON conference this week, and Game Developers Conference next week. If you're interested in meeting up with us during that time to talk about Open AIM (or anything else), drop me an email [juberti at AOL].

Open AIM

2006-03-06T05:33:00.000-08:00

At last! Today is a big day for our team and AOL as weproudly announce the "Open AIM" platform at http://developer.aim.com.In addition to our AIM Presence web service, we are now offering the AIM SDK toall developers. With the AIM SDK, developers can write plugins for the AIMTriton and AIM Pro clients, or write their very own custom AIM clients.

The full functionality of the AIM network is exposed in theAIM SDK – it’s the same robust and performant libraries that AIM Triton and AIMPro are built on top of. Both plugins and custom clients have easy access topresence, text messaging, SMS, voice, video, security services, and much more.And it’s being made available through a very flexible license – it’s free touse for non-commercial and limited commercial use (up to 250,000 users perday).

The JAMS source code, and other sample code, is included inthe SDK. And there is extensive documentation, so it’s easy to get started.

Why are we doing this? We think that we can offer developersthe best IM platform, by combining the AIM network’s extensive reach (63million active users) with the power of our AIM SDK and web services – and thatputs us at a real competitive advantage.

We’re really excited to be launching this first version ofthe AIM SDK, but also have a lot more in store that just couldn’t make it intothe 1.0 release. We’ll be offering a number of new features, plus support formore languages and platforms in future versions of the SDK. Show us what youcan do!

Triton Beta 1.2.10

2006-02-15T18:40:00.000-08:00

We just released a new beta of AIM Triton, this was mainly a bugfix release as we get ready to land our next set of features. Notable improvements in this release include support for most proxy configurations, and (at long last) a fix for the plugin settings bug.

For proxies, we will now support SOCKS5 and HTTPS proxies if they are configured/autodetected with IE. However, we don't currently support proxies that require authentication as we have not yet done the work to deal with retrieval/storage of the proxy credentials. A future release will support SOCKS4 (is anybody still using this?), proxies that require authentication, and smart selection of the ports used to contact the AIM service. If you are using Triton and are having problems connecting, please let me know (along with any details of your network that you know) so that I can find out where we can still improve.

For the settings bug, a small oversight on my part led to this being broken for several weeks. When "null" is passed in from Javascript, the VARTYPE of that argument is VT_NULL, not VT_EMPTY. I missed this when we were trying to get all the plugin stuff finished and we didn't get a chance to get a new acccore.dll into Triton for quite a while.

Anyway, settings will now work for plugins that support settings (IAccCommandTarget::Exec with a command id of -1). The only JAMS plugin that currently supports settings is Colorizer, where you can change the saturation and value of your colors, as well as the time it takes to cycle through all the hues. Now that the settings button works, look for more plugins to have tweakable settings (one common ask is for timestamps in EZLogger) in a future version of JAMS.

AOL Employee Blogroll

2006-02-14T12:20:00.000-08:00

So this blogging thing is starting to catch on at AOL. Seems like every day, I'm getting email from another employee blogger. So I figured I would make a master list of employee bloggers... and sort them by their AIM Fight scores.

Here's the top 5:

Sree (Open Services)
GraphicallySpeaking
Andy (AIM Server)
IM Host
Ted (AOL Vice Chairman)
Ted's Take
Shawn (AOL ModuleT)
Way Outbox
Me (AIM Infrastructure)
Tales of a Running Man

And here is the full version of the list.

New Week, New Stuff

2006-02-13T14:14:00.000-08:00

Last week brought some reshuffling of the technology groups at AOL, with one result being a greater focus on open services, and a second result being that I now report to the SVP in charge of open services (Sree Kotay). Sree's done some neat stuff in his career (Kai's Power Tools); it's always cool to have a VP who can still throw down some CODE.

Open services are going to be a big deal at AOL (really!)- we already have AIM Presence, with AIM Plugins, AOL ModuleT, and a bunch of stuff I can't talk about yet coming really soon. Some other AOL employee blogs to check out... Greg and Justin C. (my team, AIM infrastructure), Corey (UI toolkit), Gus (AIM Triton UI), John (OCP infrastructure), and Jason (MusicNow).

And in the "it's about time" category... hometown.aol.com/members.aol.com now support SFTP... point your SFTP client (I like PSFTP) at hometown.aol.com and log in using your AIM username/password. I will no longer have to fight the Hometown file manager to upload my photos...

Google and AOL

2006-02-09T18:04:00.000-08:00

Whoah! Been a bit heads-down finishing up our APIs and cranking on new stuff for Triton. Can't wait to get this stuff out in your hands. Anyway, a number of recent happenings to blog about...

Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, dropped by the AOL campus as a surprise guest to one of our company meetings. Sitting in the audience, it was very interesting to hear him speak. The Q & A session with him was very funny:

Q (read by Jon Miller, AOL CEO): Why did you pursue a deal with AOL? Was it simply to block Microsoft with us as a pawn in a geopolitical chess game?

A (Eric): Yes. (Massive laughter). I can't think of any other reason. Did you have another question?

Eric is on the left in the picture, wearing his very bright blue suit. On the right is Ted Leonsis, AOL executive and majority owner of the Washington Capitals hockey team. Ted's an interesting character and has a blog you should check out at http://ted.aol.com.

Cool AIM Stuff of the Week

2006-01-27T13:36:00.000-08:00

A bunch of things going on, so I'm a bit light on the updates this week. I'll bedoing a mailbag early next week. In the meantime, here's a few neatAIM-related things I found while poking around on the web:

AIM Buddy Icon Maker on the Web
Not quite as cool as the JAMS IconMaker plugin, but this websiteallows you to take just about any image (there is a 300K size limit), uploadit, and get it back as an AIM buddy icon that you can simply click toset as your own buddy icon. Works in AIM 5.9 and all other AIM versionsthat support the aim:BuddyIcon URL (AIM Triton users should use JAMS :)
Personal AIM server
Written from scratch by a bored AIM user, this personal AIM serverallowsyou to have your own private AIM network. It is provided as source code(VB 6.0), so you can look it over and/or extend it to do what you want.Tomake your AIM client use it, simply run it and change the AIM serveraddress in the connection preferences to the IP address of the machinerunning this AIM server. It only supports a subset of the AIM protocol,and so AIM Triton can't use it, but it's quite interesting nonetheless.Some other interesting stuff on this site as well.
AIM Business Cards
While looking for information about AIM SMS short codes, I found thispage which allows you to create business cards with your AIMscreenname, which you can then print out from your computer. Kind ofshort on the options, but maybe of interest to someone.

JAMS 2.51

2006-01-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

JAMS 2.51 is out with a couple minor improvements:
* MobileControl will now return users' away messages when using the "info" command
* The issue with MobileControl and the """ entities has been resolved.
* The issue with IconMaker not showing up for many users due to an invalid key has been resolved.

Also, apologies for not better explaining the keying issue and what it means to API developers. The "You know what that means" good news in the prior API Update post was simply intended to mean that the official release of the API is in its final stages. With regards to the keying, all it means is that you will need to come to our developer web page to obtain a (free) key string, just like you do for the AIM Presence Web Service (or any of Google's Web APIs). This allows us to identify the customers of the API, and protect ourselves and our users from malware plugins. If you have further questions on this topic, please let me know... it will all become clear when the API is released.

The license plate here was seen while driving by the Apple campus while out in California. VV (W?), thanks for your support!

Orb Networks

2006-01-20T22:16:00.000-08:00

Finished up our Bay Area swing with a visit to Orb Networks, who does some really neat stuff allowing you to access your home media (photos, TV shows) remotely either by PC or cell phone (and for free). They've done some integration with Skype where you can get your Skype voicemails remotely, but we think they can do a lot more than that with our AIM APIs. We got some great feedback from them, especially regarding how our API stacks up against Skype's. We're definitely looking forward to an AIM-enabled release of their product.

This photo is shot from the Orb conference room looking out across San Francisco bay, from the Oakland side. Quite a view...

InterGoogleop

2006-01-20T22:13:00.000-08:00

Spent a long day Thursday at the Googleplex discussing various technical matters. We're jazzed to have Google extending the AIM network, and weexpect our collaboration on engineering will result in great things forour users. It's quite fun to be able to share experiences with peoplewho have had to solve the same technical problems, and exciting tothink about what could be accomplished if we can work together.

Wedidn't get to meet Larry or Sergey, but we did get a cool mini-tourwhere we saw, among other things, the Google "globe" plotting where allthe Google search queries on the Earth are coming from. It would be way coolto do the same thing for all of our AIM traffic...

Apples and Running Men

2006-01-19T22:48:00.000-08:00

Dropped by the Apple campus on Wednesday to talk about some of the new and upcoming AIM features. Apple's iChatAV uses the AIM libraries that my team develops, and they've done great stuff with them - a perfect example of an external developer using our APIs to build a super product and add value to the AIM platform.

The iChat guys were great to talk to and it was a truly memorable visit -
getting to see Steve Jobs, John Ives, people from various Mac OS X teams, and the new MacBook Pros running iChatAV at an amazing resolution and framerate.

We did discuss audio/video interop and there will be a new AIM Triton out soon that will properly interop for audio and video calls with iChatAV in Mac OS X 10.4.4 (iChatAV 3.1.1)

Looking forward to see what the team comes up with for the next major iChatAV release...

AIM API Update

2006-01-17T18:48:00.000-08:00

Greg and I are out in Silicon Valley this week talking with some select customers about our APIs (and getting a chance to grab some great fish tacos). Here's a shot of the AOL building here in Mountain View, where we gave a presentation today - love the palm trees.

Anyway, about the APIs - we have some good news and some bad news.
First the bad news: if you have been developing 'unofficial' plugins by looking at acccore.dll/reverse-engineering JAMS, your plugins probably stopped working today. This is because our API key management system went into production today.
The good news: you know what that means.
Also: head on over to I Am Alpha and see the web widget APIs that our AIM web guys have whipped up. These are not the AIM Plugin APIs, sorry for the confusion.

Off to another exciting location tomorrow! (If you're a native of the area and have any recommendations for hip restaurants, we'd love to hear from you.)

Update 1/18/06:
The IconMaker plugin in JAMS 2.5 had an incorrect key and was therefore disabled by the key-management system. Look for a JAMS 2.51 this week with a fix.

IM Etiquette

2006-01-16T10:38:00.000-08:00

I came across an interesting page today entitled "IM Etiquette".Some of these tips are more important than others, but people who usegood etiquette when IMing me (and probably many others) are much more likelyto get a good response.

Most important tip:
"Unless it's some sort of joke or prank, don't leave more than two consecutive messages for someone who you know is away. The same goes for if you're talking to someone and they don't respond right away. They may be otherwise occupied. There is no reason for "Hi!", then five seconds later "Hello?", then "Anybody home?!". This elevates into ridiculousness and you'll only lose the other person's respect. And they will want to ninja-kick you."

Using AIM Triton with Google Desktop Search

2006-01-12T10:54:00.000-08:00

Google Desktop Search is a nice utility, and its support for indexingAIM conversations has saved me many times when I have had to remembersome obscure detail that someone metioned to me in an IM several weeksbefore. Unfortunately, it doesn't support AIM Triton yet, butgetting it working is not too difficult. If you're handy with a hexeditor, you can follow the steps below. Otherwise, you can skip to theend and just download the file you need.

1. Shut down GDS, from the tray icon.
2. Find GoogleDesktopNetwork2.dll; for me, this file was in the "C:\Program Files\Google\Google Desktop Search" folder.
3. Make a backup of this file, in case you make a mistake.
4. Open GoogleDesktopNetwork2.dll in your favorite hex editor.
5. Scroll down to approximately offset 0x1A000, or search for "aim.exe"
6. You will see a list of EXEs such as waol.exe, opera.exe,netscape.exe, msn6.exe. Each name will be in Unicode format, meaningeach character is 2 bytes, with the first character being a NUL (00).
7. Pick one of the EXEs that you do not use; "msn6.exe" is a goodchoice because it is the same size as "aim6.exe". (To be fair, I willnote that "waol.exe" is also a good choice.)
8. Replace the EXE name that you have chosen with aim6.exe. If youchose a name that was longer than 4 characters, you will need toreplace the remaining characters with NUL bytes.
9. Save your changes.
10. Restart GDS.
11. Restart AIM Triton.

If you don't want to go through all this trouble yourself, and you areusing the version "Google Desktop 20050818-en", you can use the GoogleDesktopNetwork2.dll that I modified and skip steps 4-8.

Hanging Out With the Running Man

2006-01-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

JAMS 2.5

2006-01-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

JAMS 2.5 has been released and can be downloaded here.It is compatible with AIM Triton 1.0 and later, please "Exit AIM" fromthe Triton menu before installing. Descriptions of all the JAMSplugins are available on the JAMS home page (now with screenshots!)

What's new:
* IconMaker - set your custom buddy icon from any image file.You can crop the image to get just what you want in your buddy icon.(by Justin)
* MobileControl - set your away message, or get buddy info bysending a SMS message from your mobile phone. (by Alan, the directorfor our group!)

Bug fixes:
* The bug where Colorizer did not work if you had customized your font has been fixed.
* EZLogger now displays an error message if you try to read a log that does not exist.

Got an idea for a neat plugin? Post it on the blog, or send it directly to us.

Update 4:17 PM 1/10/2006:
* The initial version of JAMS 2.5 had an issue where the displayedversion numbers said 2.2. This has been resolved with the latestjams25.exe.
* To use MobileControl, you must first set the mobile phone number youwill be using. Currently, you must do this from the Actions menu, "SetMobile Phone Number". This will pop up a dialog where you can set yournumber, and also display the commands you can send. The currentlysupported commands are "@away msg" and "@info username".
* The Settings buttons do not work in JAMS 2.5, because it requires anew AIM Triton (version 1.2) that has not yet been released. Look forit soon.

Mailbag 1/6/2006

2006-01-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Got a number of questions over the past week:

Q: I want to build an AIM bot, but I am having trouble with ratelimits and other uptime issues. How can I ensure my bot stays online?
A: We have a bot program where you can be added to our "botwhitelist" for a certain price (I don't know the pricing offhand). Ifyou are interested, send me an email with "bot" in the subject line andI will send it on to our bot business folks. In the future, we hope tohave an AIM bot (naturally) where you can submit these requests.
Q: What happened to Direct Connect/Instant Images in Triton?
A: We ran out of time and it missed the cut for Triton 1.0. However Ihave seen some demos from the team working on the UI for it and I cansay that it will be worth waiting for.
Q: Why doesn't Triton's audio or video work with Apple's iChatAV?
A: We switched to a new SIP stack with Triton, and both Triton andiChatAV had some incompatibilities that did not fully get sorted out intime for launch. Look for these incompatibilities to be resolved withthe next Triton (1.2 hopefully) and iChatAV builds.
Q: I don't like the green color used for the messages I send. Can I change the IM window text colors?
A: The colors are set in Triton's strings.xml file. You can find strings.xml at
C:\Program Files\Common Files\AOL\....\imapp\verXYZ\resources\en-US\.In this file, <stringname="imForm.userColor">#4a9e00</string> sets everyone'sfavorite green. "imForm.buddyColor" sets the sender's color. You canchange these values to something more pleasing to you; the changs willtake effect the next time you start Triton.
Q: Is the plugin API ready yet?
A: We are still expecting a release in the very near future. In the meantime...
Q: I looked at the acccore.dll type library you mentioned beforebut I don't know where to start. What interface should I be looking at?
A: IAccPlugin is the base interface that all plugins need toimplement. Methods on that interface will be called when your plugin isloaded and unloaded.
Q: Can I test the new Mac AIM client?
A: You will read about it here as soon as it is available.

2005 Retrospective

2005-12-30T13:04:00.000-08:00

So it's time to look back and see how we did in 2005.

Things we did right:

AIM Triton 1.0. Back in 2004, we had gotten to a pointwith the AIM 5.x codebase where we knew we could not innovatesignificantly any longer. The UI was hard to update, our Unicode(non-English characters) support was awful, the HTML renderer was aconglomeration of patches... we needed to rewrite almost everything...and so we did, resulting in AIM Triton. Yes, AIM Triton does not yethave all the features of AIM 5.9, including several important ones, andI will be the first to admit that we need to continue to fix bugs andimprove performance. Nevertheless, the new platform that we haveestablished is much better in terms of overall correctness andflexibility than what we had before, and getting there has been asubstantial achievement.. The new UI is great and the plugin supportwill open the door to lots of neat stuff - plus we're working hard ongetting your most-requested features back in for the next Tritonreleases.

AIM Developer APIs. From the humble beginnings in AIM URLs andbig.oscar.aol.com, we have been working to open up AIM to the outside.And now with the AIM Presence API and the upcoming release of the AIMTriton Plugin API we are have an opportunity for people to build realapplications on our platform. This new opennness may be suprising tosome, but we've wanted to do this for a long time - we know we don'thave all the ideas!

AIMFight. Two guys did this as a quick fun feature that theythought people would enjoy. So it was pretty awesome to see it make thefront page of the Washington Post. The profligation of widgets thatdisplay the AIM fight scores are also great - another example of peopleusing our AIM APIs.

And things we didn't:

The AIM Terms of Service. A couple of unclear sentences in theTOS and we find ourselves looking like we're trying to claim ownershipof everyone's AIM conversations. Of course this was untrue, but gettingthat cleared up resulted in a very unfun week.

The AIM Profile hyperlink: I thought everyone would love the newall-in-one AIM Profile/Away page. And, we thought, what better way tolet people know about it than putting a link in users' profiles? Well,as it turns out, people don't like having a profile they carefullycreated altered in any way. This was a case where we thought we weredoing a good thing, but the way we did it made it a mess.

Megabots. I think the Moviefone bot is pretty neat, but I knewforcing it into the buddylist, especially at the top, was going tocause an outcry. Having just been through the AIM Profile hyperlinkissue, we tried our best to argue against this same sort of unwantedchange to personal data...

So, there it is. There are many other wins that I don't have the spaceto talk about now (500 buddies, JAMS, VoIP), and there are many otherbad ideas that we prevented as a result of our constant fight to "do noevil". We (AIM teams) worked really hard to do cool stuff in 2005, andyou can expect the same of us in 2006. Happy New Year!

Mailbag 12/29/2005

2005-12-29T18:58:00.000-08:00

With all the great questions I've received, I've decided to copy anidea of Greg's and start a weekly mailbag post. You can post yourquestions in blog comments or send them to me directly. Here's thefirst set of questions...

Q: When will the next version of JAMS be released?
A: The new tenative release date for the next JAMS is 1/6/06.

Q: What will be in the next JAMS?
A: Greg and I are working on two great new plugins that addmuch-requested functionality to Triton. The bug with Colorizer notworking if you have customized your font will be fixed. We will also belooking into the reported iTunes issues.

Q: When can I develop my own plugin?
A: I cannot comment on dates, other than to say that we will be releasing the SDK "really soon".

Q: What if I don't want to wait?
A: You can get a head start by looking at the type library foracccore.dll, which is installed in the AIM Triton folder under"services/im". You can use the "oleview.exe" tool to view the typelibrary.

Q: Anything more you can say about the plugin SDK?
A: As previously mentioned, the JAMS source code will be released withthe SDK. There will also be a number of other goodies and surprises.
.
Q: Can you make JAMS work with my favorite music player?
A: If you send us a code snippet or URL showing how to get the track info for said player, we will try to add it.

Q: Can you make a plugin that adds the alert icon to the buddy list?
A: AIM plugins cannot currently change the buddy list UI. However, a future version of Triton should have this feature.

Q: Can you make the settings button work for JAMS?
A: Unfortunately this is a bug in AIM Triton 1.0 and 1.1. It can't be fixed in JAMS, but it will be fixed in Triton 1.2.

Q: Can you make a version of JAMS for the Triton betas and one for Triton 1.0?
A: JAMS 2.2 and all future releases will work with Triton 1.0 and allsubsequent Triton releases, so there is no need for separate versionsof JAMS.

Q: Can we have timestamps for every message in the logs?
A: Personally I think this clutters things up, but there has beenenough interest that I will try to add it as an option in a future JAMS.

Q: Can EzLogger use the default browser instead of IE to display logs?
A: I tried to make that work, but I could not figure out how to makeShellExecute navigate to a URL with an anchor, so that the log isscrolled to the end (e.g. file:///juberti.html#end). If you know of away, please let me know.

Q: Can you get working on a new Mac AIM?
A: We have been.

Disneyworld!

2005-12-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

Just got back from 8 days at Disney World and SeaWorld with the family. Some of my favorite pictures from the trip...

JAMS 2.2

2005-11-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

JAMS 2.2 is available for download and works with AIM Triton 1.0, as well as the most recent AIM Triton Betas.

What's new in JAMS 2.2:
* EZLogger now will bring up a specific buddy's IM history if youselect that buddy and invoke "Show IM Logs" from the AIM Triton Actionsmenu.
* A number of bugs reported have been fixed, including issues with the%song argument not working properly in MyTunes, and incomplete cleanupof the registry during uninstallation. If you encounter problems withJAMS 2.2, please comment here on the blog; as this is how I find outabout most issues.

Due to popular demand, I have also posted a page that details all the JAMS plugins and what they do.

Update 11/23 10:31 PM EST: We goofed. I discovered the"Settings" buttons are not working for any plugins in Triton 1.0.2. Itwill be fixed in the next Triton release. I also verified the issuewith Colorizer where IMs are not colorized if you have customized yourfont preference. I will release a version of JAMS next week that willresolve this issue (unless you have customized the color in your fontpreference). I was not able to reproduce thereported issues with MyTunes.

JAMS 2.1

2005-10-28T09:13:00.000-07:00

JAMS 2.1 isout, and works with AIM Triton Beta 8. For best results, beforeinstalling, "Exit AIM" from the AIM Triton File menu or tray icon first.

The main new stuff in 2.1 is:
* Broadcaster - new plugin from Greg that sends an IM to every buddy in a group
* Better integration with AIM Triton- no more silly tray icon, now the plugin commands will come up whenyou click the "Actions" button on the AIM Triton main window.
* A number of usability fixes to EZLogger and MyTunes based on user feedback.

Update 10/28 4:32 PM EDT:
Igoofed and accidentally uploaded the wrong file when I published thisthe first time. If you downloaded JAMS 2.1 prior to this update, pleaseredownload and reinstall. Sorry... had lunch on the mind...

Update 11/11 4:37 PM EST:
Haven't had time to update recently... crunch time. Couple things I wanted to mention:
* There is a known problem with MyTunes not replacing %song properly... will fix as soon as I have time
*The JAMS tray icon will not be returning... please use the TritonPlugin Settings tab to configure plugins and the Triton "Actions"button to activate them
* I am working on a web page that lists all the JAMS features... hopefully will be done in time for JAMS 3.0...
*Regarding uninstallation, JAMS only installs 1 file, jams.dll, which iscleaned up by the uninstaller as long as JAMS is not loaded into memoryat the time. If you are seeing JAMS leave other stuff behind... pleasedescribe and I will look into it.

Yalta 2005?

2005-10-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

Greg has a post on his blog with a picture that was taken of AIM (Greg), Yahoo, and MSN developers together at PDC 2005. Always interesting to know your competition...

AIM Developer Site Live

2005-10-06T07:19:00.000-07:00

The new AIM Developer Sitehas been launched to support the AIM Presence API that we are unveilingtoday. I'll be covering the AIM Presence API in a future post; rightnow I wanted to encourage developers to registerand learn about license keys. Registration and license keys areimportant parts of all the AIM Developer stuff we will be releasing inthe coming weeks, including other AIM web services and AIM TritonPlugins.

Also, I wanted to menion the AIM Developer Message Boardswhere we will be answering questions about the AIM Developer Programand AIM Presence API. Note that these forums are for technicalquestions only; for help with using AIM please refer to our support center.

500 Buddies

2005-10-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

The max buddy limit has now been raised to 500 Now you can have room for just about anyone you know on your buddylist. (An interesting article here indicates that the average person knows 290 people. So we're giving you close to double that!) Because of some database constraints, the maximum number of buddies in a single group is still 200. We'll see what we can do in the future.

Update 10/08/2005:
It is reported at this site that Yahoo's max buddy limit is 300 and MSN's is only 150. :-D

Update 10/10/2005:
Dare from MSN reports that MSN's limit is actually 300. Nice to meet you Dare!

New Logo and AIM Triton Demo

2005-10-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

"yt?" is history. Now the Running Man's got a new favorite word.
Also, there's a new Flash demo of some of the new features in AIM Triton up on aim.com. Check it out at http://www.aim.com/triton/demo.html

JAMS 2.0!

2005-09-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

Finally... JAMS 2.0 is out!

It requires Triton Beta 6. Use in Triton Beta 5 will probably cause "undesirable operation". Our plugin API is now locked down, so JAMS 2.0 should work with all future Triton builds.

Here's what's new:
* Easier to use - plugins are automatically enabled when you install. You can disable ones you don't want to use using the plugin tab in Triton's settings.
* Blops - Import and export your buddylist using BLT files (Greg)
* EZFormat - Add *bold*, /italic/, or _underline_ in your IMs easily (me)
* PhoneNumToLink - Incoming phone numbers in IMs are converted to hyperlinks, when you click them they trigger an AIM VOIP call (Steven)

Also, updates to:
* MyTunes - doesn't overwrite your Profiler profile. If a profile is set, it will replace "%song" with your currently playing song. So you can do "Hi, I'm currently listening to %song."
* FightClub - server changed, it now works again.
* And some miscellaneous bug fixes.

Some other plugins that just missed the cutoff for JAMS 2.0 are a cool buddy icon picker, and the ability to go away when your Bluetooth phone goes out of range. Also, future builds will integrate better with the AIM Triton UI, instead of the (admittedly clumsy) tray icon.

More AIMFighting

2005-09-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

Previously I wrote about the http://aimfight.com/getFight.php URL for getting AIM Fight data programatically. However, this is not the official interface for getting this data.

http://big.oscar.aol.com/PopularQuery?screenname=<screenname> will return more detailed AIM Fight information, in XML format. A query for "juberti" returns the following XML blob:

Here, "CurrentBuddyScore3" is your current AIM Fight score, "MaxBuddyScore3" is the highest score you have had recently, and "OverallRankScore3", if nonzero, is your ranking in the list of top AIM Fight scores.

Web services like this are an important part of our AIM roadmap. Look for more stuff like this in the near future...

Humor for Geeks

2005-09-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

I was talking to some folks who just got back from the Microsoft developer conference, one of the things they mentioned from the conference was a Microsoft Battlebot whose operating code was all written in .NET. Appropriately, it is called "The Finalizer". Even better is its tagline: "IDispatch the Fury". (If you didn't get it, you can read about .NET's garbage collector or IDispatch.)

http://www.finalizer.net/ has details, including the source code for download.

My sources tell me various things about this guy, but he has flow. ytcracker, the "heavily disputed king of nerd rap" has released an album for free download of several raps set to soundtracks from old Nintendo games. One of my favorite lyrics (from "meganerd"):

"Basically BASIC was the first language I spoke, I was telling Apple deuces just where they could PEEK and POKE".

Legit old school. If raps about "pushing and popping, XOR and NOPing" sound interesting to you, give it a listen.

Celebrity Buddies

2005-09-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

I get several IMs every week that start with the message "who isthis?". This puzzled me for a while - what would lead people to asksuch a question? Do these people really forget who they added to theirbuddy list? Do they go around calling people on the phone and askingthem "who is this?" Where did they learn their manners? I was reallywondering until I read an article the other day about celebrity buddylists. Apparently there are lists of celebrity screennames being sentaround on the internet, which people add into their buddy list, andthen try to strike up a conversation with these celebrities. Amazingly,I am on some of those lists. I can only imagine what it must be likefor a real celebrity to sign on - getting bombarded by dozens of "whois this?", "waz^", or "prove you're really such-and-such" must makeusing IM a real joy for these people. To those affected, I apologize...

Here's one of the lists (note: I am not on this list).

Long Overdue Update

2005-09-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while since I last had an update. We've been crankinghard on stuff for AIM Triton, finally got a chance to come for air.Hope to have some more updates in the next couple days, with a JAMSrelease for Triton Beta 5, the latest on TOC, comments on GTalk, andsome other stuff I've been meaning to post.

Also wanted to mention my trip to Europe last month - had a great timewith the folks from AOL Germany - thanks to Markus, Alex, and Volker.Some pictures below...

At a German sausage stand in Hamburg with Volker and Günter.
(Update 9/7: for those unsure, I am the one in the black shirt.)

Driving through the French countryside towards Reims.

In Paris for IETF 63.

JAMS 1.5 Released (And Logging for All...)

2005-08-18T06:42:00.000-07:00

JAMS 1.5, the newest set of plugins for AIM Triton, is now available. JAMS 1.5 works under AIM Triton Beta 3 and 4. For more information on JAMS, click here.

Lots of goodies in JAMS 1.5 (which is why it took so long):
* EZLogger - automatically logs your IM and chat room conversations (finally!) [screenshot]
* FightClub - AIM Fight against everyone on your buddylist at once! See who's regulating in your hood. [screenshot]
* Profiler (by Greg Cypes)- Set and edit your AIM profile.
* AVProps (by Steven)- Tweak the control knobs for voice and video sessions.
* MyTunes - iTunes is now supported in addition to WinAmp.

Update 09/06/2005: JAMS 2.0 for Triton Beta 5 will be outsoon. If you are having problems with IMs not showing up in EZLogger,if possible email me a copy of the IM that was lost. We do a conversionfrom the funky AOLRTF format used by older AIM clients to XHTML 1.0,and the kinks in this converter are still being worked out.

And Blogging For All... For Real Now

2005-07-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

The green light has officially been given... from Employee Central [AOL employees only]...

"As AOL employees, are we allowed to blog? Yes. However all of the policies and guidelines thatpertain to how you conduct yourself as an employee also apply toblogging."

If you are blogging or thinking about blogging, be sure to read thefull statement. It boils down to 3 simple concepts - don't discloseprivate information, don't bash co-workers, and don't try to speak forAOL to the media.

Have fun!

AIM Fight Hacks

2005-07-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

It didn't take long for people to start doing neat stuff with AIMFight."DosBubba" on Slashdot was the first one I saw to uncover the(unofficial) web API used by the aimfight.com page:

http://aimfight.com/getFight.php?name1=SCREENNAME1&name2=SCREENNAME2

The returned data is of the form

&success=1&score1=132451&score2=6004&oscore1=27241&oscore2=0&height1=99&height2=4

where:
"success=1" -> both names were valid
"score1=132451" -> score of name1
"score2=6004" -> score of name2
"oscore1=27241" -> name1 was ranked with a rank of #27241
"oscore2=0" -> name2 not ranked
"height1=99" -> relative height of name1's vertical bar
"height2=4" -> relative height of name2's vertical bar

"jcuervo" quickly came up with a Perl wrapper, and "DBergere" wrote a shell script wrapper. "timdorr" even wrote a Mac OS X Dashboard widget.

Dashboard users may also want to check out this widget,which displays selected buddies on your desktop. Pretty neat, but wouldbe even better if it could display the buddy icon as well... whichseems like it should be easy to do if you have read this post. Anyone feeling brave?

AIM Triton Beta 4

2005-07-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Version 0.4.7 of Triton is out. You can download from http://beta.aol.com/projects/tritonbeta/index.html. I've moved up to it and it has a number of nice tweaks from the previous beta.

JAMS 1.0 continues to work with Beta 4. However, I have noticed two issues:
* When using Colorizer, the second IM sent out in a session does notget colorized. This is because AIM Triton generates bad FONT tags(before the BODY element) in the second (and apparently only thesecond) outgoing IM. I will need to talk to the UI guys about that one.
* LWAway can cause Triton's UI to crash. I haven't figured it outexactly, but receiving an IM when LWAway has put the client into "away"mode seems to cause the Triton UI to tube. I suggest disabling LWAwayfor now until we can get this sorted out.

I'm heading off to AOL Germany next week, and will be at IETF-63 inParis the week after that, but will be releasing JAMS 1.1 shortly(hopefully). Been pretty busy, so the only real new feature is thatMyTunes now will support iTunes.

One last note - been playing around with the ATOM protocol exposed byAOL Journals. Pretty powerful stuff! I made a simple javascript thatallows you to enter a screenname and dumps out all journals for thatname, along with their last modified date. You can get the source here - run it from the command line like "cscript atomtest.js juberti".

AIM Fight!

2005-07-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

AIM Fight is now officially live! Find out how popular you are in theAIM universe, and compare to a friend! (Sorry Greg, I had to go upagainst someone).

For the developers out there, this is an example of some of our new AIMserver APIs that we expect to make public in the near future.

Update: As a bonus of our shared backend, AimFight also works for ICQ numbers.

Blog from the Beach

2005-07-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

Out on vacation this week... couple quick things I heard about that you should check out...

Watch the space shuttle launch on aol.com

More AIM Presence Indicator Stuff

2005-07-06T06:07:00.000-07:00

scottp00010 wrote in with some PHP code he wrote to generate differentoutput from a webserver based on whether the target user is online oroffline. Less hacky than the javascript solution I posted a couplemonths ago. He has code for the AIM version and an ICQ version- these could also be condensed into a single version by checking thefirst character of the screenname and going to big.oscar.aol.com if aletter, or status.icq.com if a number.

Update:
Scott has posted a new version that supports both AIM and ICQ as described above.

AIM Plugins

2005-07-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

A while back I blogged about how AIM Triton would support plugins. Andwe've made several statements to that effect in the press. Well, we'vebeen working on our plugin support for many months, and so I canreportthat every version of Triton released so far has supported plugins...but unfortunately, there is so much stuff that we are working on forTriton, that we haven't had time to get a nice UI for pluginsdone.

OK... so where is this all going? I'm pleased to announce version 1.0of Juberti'sAIM ModificationS(JAMS), the first set of plugins for AIM Triton. As an example of theflexibility of Triton's plugin API, the user interface for managingplugins is implemented as... a JAMS plugin.

Note: JAMS 1.0 requires AIM Triton Beta 3. If you install JAMSunderAIM Triton Beta 2, you will probably find that AIM Triton no longerworks. If you have any problems using JAMS 1.0, an uninstaller isincluded.

Once you install JAMS, the next time you sign on with AIM Triton, youwill see this icon -> in your system tray. If you double-click it, it will bring up theplugin management UI. From there you can enable, disable, or configureany of the installed AIM Triton plugins.

Besides the plugin management plugin, JAMS 1.0 includes the followingplugins (note that plugins are disabled by default, and need to bemanually enabled through the plugin UI)
* Colorizer - automatically applies a color to youroutgoing IMs and chat messages that changes over time.
* LWAway - automatically sets AIM as away when youlock yourworkstation (for Win XP users, Windows Key + L), and comes back whenyou unlock.
* MyTunes - automatically adds the current track youarelistening to in WinAmp to your AIM profile and status text. (Willsupport AOL Media Player and iTunes in the future)

None of these plugins are particularly awe-inspiring, but they are abunch of useful toys that we were able to write in less than a day,andthey show just some of the things you can do in just a handful oflinesof code with the AIM Triton plugin API. We'll be adding to andenhancing JAMS throughout the AIM Triton beta cycle to show off otherneat things that you can do. Note that JAMS is written using C++ andATL, but the plugin API is COM/IDispatch and so supports anyCOM-compatible language.

So... many of you are probably wondering... "when can we write pluginsfor Triton?"
We're working on a developer site right now, where we will bepublishing the AIM Triton plugin API, a tutorial for writing a "HelloWorld" plugin, and the source code for JAMS. Look for it in the comingweeks...

If you've read this far... we are looking to hire a contractor towriteAIM Triton plugins for the next several months. If this sounds likefunto you, you live in the Washington DC area, and you have ~5 years ofC++ experience and 2 years of COM/ATL experience (plugin experiencewould be great too), send me a resume and sample code ifpossible.

Triton Beta 3

2005-06-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

Triton beta 3 was released today at http://beta.aol.com/projects/tritonbeta.
Highlights of the new build:
* Performance has improved substantially (we will continue to focus on this)
* AOL Radio integration (really well done)
* Save screenname and password (finally!)
* Plugins! (will post about this very soon)

As always, please continue to send me your comments, positive ornegative (keeping in mind this is still a beta). Outside perspectivesare really interesting to us.

More on IMAP/SMTP settings

2005-06-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

I was having trouble sending mail with my aim.com account, butfortunately I was able to walk down the hall and talk with the head ofmail development, who informed me of the error of my ways...

You must use smtp.aim.com:587 for sending mail, NOT smtp.aol.com. On the IMAP side, you should use imap.aim.com:143, although imap.aol.com will still work. When I made this change, things worked fine for me.

He also mentioned that SSL/TLS is a work in progress, so you might beable to use SSL/TLS for your aim.com SMTP and IMAP - but you might not.

And Blogging for All...

2005-06-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

AOL management has given the official OK for employee blogging... hopeI helped influence that decision. Now you can read several otheremployee blogs, including Greg, an engineer on my team (AIM architecture), and a different Justin,an engineer on the Boxely team (UI toolkit). Greg's blog has had a lotof updates already, so it obviously means he is less busy than I am. Iwill have to talk to him about that :)

We also recently opened up blogging for AIM users... you can get your AIM blog, or read other AIM users' blogs, here.

350 Buddies...

2005-06-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

We've now raised the limit to 350 buddies on your buddy list... and we're not done yet.

Responding to those who asked about SMTP settings for AIM Mail:supposedly you can use smtp.aol.com, port 587, with your AIM user nameand password - but I had problems with this. I've asked some folks onour mail team to look into it.

AIM Mail IMAP settings

2005-06-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

IMAP access is now turned on for all aim.com accounts. Set your IMAP client to use imap.aol.com, port 143, and use your AIM name as the username.

AIM Triton Beta 2 is out!

2005-05-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

Quite a busy day. Download at http://beta.aol.com./projects/tritonbeta.

AIM profile size increased

2005-05-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

One of the most-requested AIM improvements has finally occurred - theAIM "profile" size has been increased from 1K to 2K. Away message sizeis increased to 2K as well, although you will have to use AIM Triton toset a > 1K away message.

Detecting AIM from a web page

2005-05-24T14:59:00.000-07:00

One of the engineers on my team, Greg Cypes, gave me some HTML that canbe used on a web page to detect whether AIM is installed. Really simplestuff that can be easily integrated into almost any webpage. You cancheck it out at this link,do "View Source" to see the few lines of Javascript that do the actualdetection. Unfortunately, it doesn't yet work with AIM Triton, althoughI am sure we will solve that before it is done.

Update: May 25, 2005 3:58 PM EDT
OK, I was wrong. The AIM detect script I posted works with IE andNetscape 4.7, but with Mozilla/Firefox, it doesn't detect AIM 5.9.Somehow the setup of the application/x-aim MIME type got busted in AIM5.9 (maybe also in 5.5). Hopefully we can get this fixed for the AIM5.9 refresh.

AIM Mail is out!

2005-05-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

More good stuff today! AIM Mail, free email for AIM users, launched today at http://mail.aol.com! Simply log in with your existing AIM screenname to get a free 2 GB aim.com mailbox with:
• AOL's excellent spam and anti-virus protection
• An awesome web front end with search
• Or, if you want to use a mail client, IMAP access
• Single Log-on - logging into AIM allows lets you seamlessly login to AIM Mail
• AIM presence integrated into email so you can see if the sender or recipients are online
• AOL's "Unsend" and "Message Status" features
• And more!

It's a great product! Check it out at http://mail.aol.com.

250 Buddies!

2005-05-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

I've said it before - there's going to be a lot of great stuff coming out of AOL this summer. Today's improvement is a new buddylist limit of 250 buddies per list (up from 200).

Also some folks have been asking about AIM Triton: is it AIM 6, or is it part of a software suite? The answer is: both. It's the successor to AIM 5.9; the latest AIM 5.9 version with AOL Browser will be the last version from the AIM 5.9 codebase. AIM 6 is also one of the first of a suite of applications (AOL Browser is another) built on top of our core platform and with our Boxely UI toolkit. I don't know whether AIM 6 will actually be called "AIM 6" when it has its final release - that's something the marketing people will decide.

Responses to AIM 6 Comments

2005-04-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

A number of people wrote in with comments, I appreciate the feedback. I'll try to address some of them here briefly...
* Features - I can't stress enough that this is AN EARLY BETA (some of us would have called it alpha). Lots of things are missing. They'll appear in future betas.
* Memory footprint. Yes, it's big. Way too big for a final product. But it's not a final product, it's an early beta, we haven't done any tuning. The footprint will come down.
* Number of processes. We currently run different components as different processes to improve stability for this beta. This will change in future releases (and will help memory footprint as well).
* IE as renderer - we do very strict client-side filtering and run the incoming text through an XHTML converter to ensure a valid DOM, so I think we will be considerably more robust than AIM 5.9's creaky ATE control. In the event that we made a mistake, we have the ability to do server-side filtering as well.
* AIM for Linux... can't say too much now, but most of the Triton code is very portable, and may show up in another form in the future.

AIM 6 Beta 1 Released!

2005-04-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

OK, we've decided to release the first beta of AIM 6 (AKA "Triton") to the public!
http://beta.aol.com/projects/tritonbeta/

Note that this is a very early beta, of a product that is a complete rewrite... it's not very polished in a lot of places. The standard disclaimers about beta software definitely apply here.

That said, you can see it's going to be a really good product. A whole new UI engine, called "Boxely", IE as the IM renderer, a new IM library called AIMcc with plugin support - we've got a solid foundation to develop on.

For those interested in the plugin API - take a look at the type library in acccore.dll. Plugins aren't exposed in this beta, and the API isn't final, but you can get an idea of what is going to be supported by this API.

AIM URLs part 2

2005-04-11T10:38:00.000-07:00

OK, so it's been a while since my last update. We've been cranking bigtime on AIM 6 and there hasn't been a lot of spare time. But AIM 6 is going to ROCK. Seriously. It's practically all new, and so many things are so much better. I can't say too much right now, but when it's out, I'll be posting a lot about it.

Anyway, back to AIM URLs. "dualenforcers" wrote in to remind me of the "Exchange" argument in aim:GoChat URLs, which allows you to specify which grouping the room is in. By default, the exchange is "4", which is for private rooms. If you want to specify a public room, you must specify "5" for the exchange number. Here's an example: aim:GoChat?RoomName=Washington+DC&Exchange=5
Unfortunately, the public rooms are often full of spammers, which has proven to be a tough problem to solve.

Another URL that is useful is GoAway. It's not that useful from a web page, like the other URLs are, but it is a simple way to programatically set your client as away. A simple example is aim:GoAway, which sets your client as away using the default message. You can also specify the "Message" argument, which allows you to specify exactly what message you want to use, and the "Hide" and "Quiet" arguments, which allow you to control the various checkboxes on the Away dialog box. Here's a more complex example: aim:GoAway?message=I+am+sleeping+right+now&Quiet=true
Note that there's no easy way to do "I'm Back" from a URL at this time; fortunately, the new plugin API will support this functionality.

That pretty much does it for the commonly used aim: URLs. Here's a list of some of the rest:

SendChatInvite (send a chat room invitation):
aim:SendChatInvite?roomname=My+Room&ListOfScreenNames=juberti2,zolaonaol
GoTalk (start an audio conversation):
aim:GoTalk?screenname=juberti2
SendFile (send a file to a buddy):
aim:SendFile?screenname=juberti2&filename=c:\short.wav
SendBuddyList (send your buddy list to a buddy):
aim:SendBuddyList?screenname=juberti2
GetFile (start a file sharing session):
aim:GetFile?screenname=juberti2
StartAIMGame (start a game):
aim:StartAIMGame?screenname=juberti2
FindABuddy (search the AIM member directory):
aim:FindABuddy?Type=Email&Message=zolaonaol@aol.com
SignOnAFriend (invite a user to join AIM):
aim:SignOnAFriend?BuddyEmail=user@example.com&Message=Try+AIM
BuddyComment (set a comment for a buddy):
aim:BuddyComment?screenname=juberti2&Comment=Test+Comment
AIMToday (bring up AIM Today):
aim:AIMToday
ExpBrowser (bring up the expressions chooser):
aim:ExpBrowser

AIM URLs

2005-03-25T13:24:00.000-08:00

You may be familiar with the aim: URL scheme, which allows web pages to interact with the AIM client software when the user clicks on a hyperlink..While it's not the most powerful programming model, it's very easy to learn and use. Four of the most common aim: URLs are "AddBuddy", "GoIM", "GoChat", and "BuddyIcon", which I will discuss in more detail below.

AddBuddy is fairly self-explanatory; it typically looks like this:
aim:AddBuddy?screenname=juberti
Clicking this will bring up the AIM user interface to add the specified screenname to your buddylist. It is also possible to add multiple screennames at once, using the "ListOfScreenNames" parameter, and to specify what group they should be added to, using the "GroupName" parameter:
aim:AddBuddy?GroupName=Bots&ListOfScreenNames=aoljournals,zolaonaol,millionaireIM

GoIM allows one to prepopulate an IM window, here's an example:
aim:GoIM?screenname=juberti&message=This+Is+A+Test.
Note the use of the '+' character for spaces; if you want to use the actual '+' character in the URL, you'll need to use '%2B' instead. This ends up being important if you want to send an IM to an SMS number, such as +18005551212.
Also, GoIM will only compose the IM, not send it; this is by design.

GoChat causes the client to automatically enter the specified chat room. The example below creates a new private room called "My Room".
aim:GoChat?roomname=My+Room

BuddyIcon allows you to set the specified screenname's buddy icon to an image that you specify (the user will be prompted first). The example below sets the buddy icon for a user named "test" to be a cool Rubik's Cube.
aim:BuddyIcon?screenname=test&src=http://www.originalicons.com/images/icons/Toys/Classics/1100779782_171306471.gif

Those are the basics. However, there are several other aim: URLs that are also fairly interesting. I'll be writing about those in a future post.

AIM Remote

2005-03-16T06:45:00.000-08:00

Some people have written in asking how they can get the AIM WebPresence Indicator on their webpage without having to code up a bunchof HTML. Fortunately, we have a tool to help with this called AIM Remote.You enter your screenname and a couple other pieces of information, andit spits out a block of HTML that you can paste right into your webpage. Here's an example that I generated:

Note that AIM Remote makes use of several aim: URLs, includingAddBuddy, GoIM, and GoChat. I'll be talking about these and someless-known aim: URLs in a future post.

AIM Web Presence Indicator - with Buddy Icons!

2005-03-15T16:03:00.000-08:00

Some of you have noticed that I display my current buddy icon in the"All About Me" section. This is accomplished through a new feature ofthe big.oscar.aol.com server, where you can supply a URL of the form"http://big.oscar.aol.com/BartSNQuery?screenname=ZolaOnAOL&type=1"and get a response like
.

You can also specify "type=0" to get the mini buddy icon.

With some trickery, you can even combine the buddy icon with the AIMWeb Presence Indicator to show your buddy icon when you are online, andan offline icon when you are offline. Here's an example:"http://big.oscar.aol.com/juberti?on_url=http://tinyurl.com/4z8aj&off_url=http://www.aim.com/remote/gr/MNB_offline.gif"

Note that I had to use TinyUrl tocondense the original BartSNQuery URL, since big.oscar doesn't likemultiple "&"s and "="s in the URL. I'll have to see if I can figureout a better workaround.

Give it a shot on your own webpage!

AIM Privacy and Slashdot

2005-03-14T10:17:00.000-08:00

OK, I am getting tired of hearing about how "The new AIM TOS allows AOLto have all rights to anything you say on IM, AOL reads/stores all yourIMs, etc."

I take this kind of personally, because that is not something I would want to be associated with.

First off, that blurb in the TOS only refers to AIM forum posts, notIMs. I agree that it is vague and should be reworded to be clear.
Second, the amount of IM traffic is on the order of hundreds ofgigabytes a day. It would be very costly, and we have no desire torecord all IM traffic. We don't do it.
Thirdly, if you still don't trust us, we have Direct IM (aka Send IMImage) and Secure IM in all recent versions of the AIM software. Inother words, you can send your IMs in such a way that they never gothrough our servers, and/or are encrypted with industry-standard SSLand S/MIME technology. I know this since I designed these features.There are no backdoors; I would not have permitted any.

I am saying this as a concerned individual, and not as a corporate spokesperson..

Icons for AIM Web Presence Indicator

2005-03-11T09:16:00.000-08:00

One thing about the AIM Web Presence Indicator is that it requires youto supply your own image URLs for online and offline. For those whodon't want to go poking around looking for little running man graphics,I found these URLs:

http://www.aim.com/remote/gr/MNB_online.gif
http://www.aim.com/remote/gr/MNB_offline.gif

I also found Frank's Icons, agreat AIM buddy icon site that not only has a lot of great icons, butallows you to customize the colors and wording on the icon as well.Here's an icon that I made:

AIM Web Presence Indicator, Extended

2005-03-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

I got some responses to the last post asking if it was possible to domore than just change the image if the user was online or offline.Well, big.oscar.aol.com doesn't know to supply anything other than animage, but it is possible to use Javascript to get the desired result.

I was hoping that the image's "location" property would be setappropriately based on the redirect from big.oscar, but unfortunatelythat's not the case. So the only thing I could think of was to have atiny offline image, and use the image's "height" property to tell inthe onload handler whether it was the online or offline image thatloaded. Fortunately, this worked pretty well. Here's a simple examplepage that demonstrates this behavior:

<html>
<script language="javascript">
function imgload(e)
{
if (document.getElementById("i").height <= 2)
document.getElementById("s").style.fontStyle = "italic";
}
</script>
<body>
<img id="i" onload="imgload()" border="0"src="http://big.oscar.aol.com/nosuchuser?on_url=http://www.aol.com/aim/gr/online.gif&off_url=http://www.aol.com/aim/gr/offline.gif">
<span id="s">nosuchuser</span>
</body>
</html>

and the output:

nosuchuser

This italicizes the text if the user "nosuchuser" is offline. This isjust a simple example, from here you can do lots of things, such asadd/change a hyperlink, etc.

AIM Web Presence Indicator

2005-03-07T13:56:00.000-08:00

In my next couple posts, I'm going to cover some of the interfaces to the AIM system that exist currently. One such example is the AIM web presence server, AKA big.oscar.aol.com. You can construct an image URL that displays one image if you are online, and another image if you are offline. Here's an example:

Note that if you are not using the "Allow everyone to see me" privacy mode, you will always show up as "offline" in this indicator.

You can also get clever and link the image to an aim GoIM URL, so that anyone who clicks on your icon will be able to easily send you an IM.

And here's it in action:

DoorManBot

2005-03-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

Matthew Goldstein wrote in about DoorManBot, a bot that allows users to submit IMs for offline users that will be delivered the next time that user signs on. Looks pretty useful. http://doorman.info/?page=info

AIM Plug-Ins

2005-02-28T13:08:00.000-08:00

Well, now that it's been made public, I can start to talk about it... the next version of the AIM client (which will be a BIG step forward from the 5.x series) will have support for 3rd party plugins.

The mechanism will be COM/IDispatch, so any standard development tool can be used to author these plugins.

The API will be very rich and support presence, IMing, file transfer, audio/video, and more, including the ability to set up peer-to-peer sessions with another user who has your plugin.

We've been thinking of some cool plug-in ideas, but I'm sure that the AIM community is where the best ideas will come from.

AOL Opening Up Community

2005-02-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

Some press on some of the stuff we are working on... http://www.betanews.com/article/AOL_Opens_Up_its_AIM_Community/1109603183

What is this?

2004-05-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

This blog is intended to discuss instant messaging at AOL. We're working on some interesting stuff here, I can't share details right now, but check back here for updates. In the meantime, I'll be linking to some of the most clever AIM stuff I've found on the internet. If you know of something interesting, send me an email.