Triton Beta 1.2.10

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

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

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

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

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...