Gus What?!

According to Google Analytics, the #1 in-bound link for May is my comment on Big Blue Ball. I wrote that referenced post back in December of 2006 when I discovered how often people asked how they could save and load their Buddy Lists.

Today, I can finally tell you that AOL not only integrated this feature in AIM 6.8, they made it even better. No plugin required. You can now save and load your Buddy List by going to the AIM menu of the Buddy List window and selecting the desired option as shown here:

If you click on the “Save Buddy List…” option, you will see the following dialog:

This dialog lets you specify what groups you want to save and what details you want to include. So now, you can save all your buddies or just certain groups and optionally save your notes and nicknames for each buddy. Clicking on “Save…” will let you specify the target file name. You can send your Buddy List by dragging the file and dropping it in an IM window.

AIM 6.8 also gives you more control when you import from a saved Buddy List. You can now double-click on a .BLT file or use the “Load Buddy List” option from the AIM menu and select the file. When you do that you will see the following dialog:

This dialog lets you load all or just certain groups from the saved Buddy List. Just check the groups you want and click on the ‘Load’ button. Check/uncheck the Buddy List checkbox to check/uncheck all groups.

Please give this beta a try. Download the AIM 6.8 beta here.

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated. Just use the “Feedback…” option in the Help menu of the Buddy List window.

Just got back from a business trip. I highly recommend flying business class, especially on Lufthansa.

Last Friday, AIM released an updated beta build of AIM 6.8. I am calling this version of AIM “Plugin-Central“. AIM has added more plugin functionality than ever before including support for these new AIM Module (AMO) plugins that are HTML/CSS and JavaScript based. If you want to see how an AMO plugin works simply rename the “.amo” file to “.zip” and peek inside. I will say more on how you can write your own AMO in a future post.

I highly recommend that you give this beta a shot. You can even find my first ever AMO on gallery.aim.com under the pen name of “IM Freaq”. “IM Freaqs” is a simple little plugin that shows the ten most frequent buddies you interact with. It’s my personal favorite so far. Here is the about screen shot of IM Freaqs (courtesy of AOL):

As Greg mentioned in his post, I also helped out with the twitterMan 4.0 plugin. Writing an AMO is pure fun.

With AIM 6.8 you can easily manage your pluigins. Just click on the “Manage” link at the bottom of the Buddy List to open the plugin manager. From there you can enable, configure, re-order, and uninstall any plugin without having to sign off. Existing AIM plugins, that are not AMOs, can also be uninstalled if they support this new feature. My RX-Plugin, IM Tweaks, and CoreWitness plugins support AIM 6.8, including the ability to uninstall them from the plugin manager.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments on AIM 6.8 and IM Freaqs, etc. I appreciate all feedback.

Thanks and enjoy.

Attention AIM Phoneline users! You can now try out the new call alerts in the latest AIM 6.5 Beta.

We have integrated the incoming call alerts in the IM window. Each new call will appear as a new tab in this window if you enable grouped IMs. Here is a sample call alert for a Free AIM Phoneline user:

Free AIM Phoneline users (Did you know that you can get a free phone number from AOL?) can use the call alert to take the call or send to voice mail. If you miss the call, you can also use the alert to listen to the voice mail. NOTE: You cannot place calls from a free AIM Phoneline account, just receive them.

Unlimited AIM Phoneline ($14.95/mo) subscribers can take advantage of the extra features in the call alerts like: Forward the call, and special greetings. You can also listen in and pickup the call while it’s in voicemail. Here is a sample call alert for and Unlimited AIM Phoneline call alert:

Here is what the “Tell Caller…” menu shows:

Please help test this out since it is a brand new feature in the AIM 6.5 Beta. Let me know if you have any problems, questions or comments on this cool new feature.

Don’t forget that AOL offers free AIM Phoneline accounts. It takes about 5 minutes to get a phone number. You can even get one in any area code in the country where AOL offers this service so you can let your long-distance friends call you on a local number near them and talk all you want for free without restrictions.