Cool AIM Stuff of the Week

A bunch of things going on, so I'm a bit light on the updates this week. I'll be doing a mailbag early next week. In the meantime, here's a few neat AIM-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 website allows you to take just about any image (there is a 300K size limit), upload it, and get it back as an AIM buddy icon that you can simply click to set as your own buddy icon. Works in AIM 5.9 and all other AIM versions that 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 server allows you 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. To make your AIM client use it, simply run it and change the AIM server address in the connection preferences to the IP address of the machine running 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 this page which allows you to create business cards with your AIM screenname, which you can then print out from your computer. Kind of short on the options, but maybe of interest to someone.
  

JAMS 2.51

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

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

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

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

Apples and Running Men

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

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

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