Gus What?!

Where would you rather be?

Larger (1MB) version after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

The latest AIM 6.5 Beta is out. You can download it here. The release notes, as posted on AOL’s beta site, are as follows:

08/23/07 - Help us test drive our new AIM 6 beta software - version 6.5.3.12. We’ve heard your feedback on our earlier beta tests and have continued to make improvements to our new features. This version includes the following:

Status message in the Buddy List®: Broadcast a personal message to your friends, even when you’re available. Click Enter status message here… and type a message. It will appear under your screen name on their Buddy List and in your IM window. New! Thanks to beta feedback, we’ve updated this feature to only show a custom status message in your Buddy List view. Note: You’ll only see the set message of users who are on your buddy list and testing with the same version. We encourage you to create a new screen name and post it in the Message Boards created for this feature so others can add it to their Buddy List to see how this feature works.

State selector menu: Do you want to set yourself as Available, Away, Mobile or invisible? Choose from the handy state drop down button. Want to go away fast? Click the yellow sticky icon and we’ll set your away message. Click it again to come back from away.

Play games with your buddies: As part of the AIM install, you can choose to install additional software from QQ games. This plugin allows you to invite your AIM buddies to play games like Pool, Poker, Puzzles, Matching and more! Compete against buddies or other players in live games or relax in practice mode.

Modern design, plus more color: Check out the new sleek chrome. We’ve also added more color to the top of your Buddy List. Pick your favorite by clicking on the color wheel in the upper right corner.

Grouped IM tabs: Look for enhancements to your grouped IM window tabs. If your buddy goes away, you’ll see the away sticky to indicate this change. Look for visuals for mobile, idle, and offline too.

Get Buddy Info: We’ve removed the blue (i) from the Buddy List. It now only appears on your buddy’s details card when you hover over their screen name. You’ll still get the orange (i) in the Buddy List to indicate something new about your buddies.

Tips from AIM: Did you know you could do that on AIM? We’ve added more tips to the IM window since our last test.

Plus: Continue to test our new TXT Message mode feature from the IM window. Don’t waste your mobile phone text messages. Send them from AIM. Clicking the TXT Msg button on the IM form is just one new place you can access this mode. And, if you are having issues signing on AIM can help configure your firewall or proxy settings. Look for the Connection tab in your settings manager.

We hope you enjoy testing the latest version of the AIM 6 beta software.

As you can see there is a lot of stuff here. I hope you take some time to try this client out. If you do, i’d like to point out three things not mentioned:

First, I highly recommend that you uninstall the previous beta or AIM 6.1. You can do this from the add remove programs in Windows. Just, make sure you tell the uninstaller to keep your data when it asks. This should make your installation nice and clean.

Second, In case you are interested in Open AIM and plug-ins, this client is using an unreleased version of the AIM SDK, 1.4.0.

Third, The plug-ins page in the settings window and the rest of the client have been updated to support the new plug-in command flags. We support the AccCommandFlags as defined in the AIM SDK 1.3.0 and later. The biggest change, in the plugins tab, is that we only show commands that the plug-in actually registered to show there. Gone are the default settings commands for each plug-in. However, if you are running an old plug-in, you can still access the default settings command by double-clicking on the plugin’s name.

Please give this client a try. Feel free to leave a comment or question about this beta.

Thanks.

P.S. More to come.

Tonight, I am releasing an updated version of Gus Verdun’s IM Control Panel. This application lets you start and stop AIM (6.x and Triton). It also gives you one-button access to the various directory locations where AIM is installed and keeps its data. You can also use this tool to restore a lost AIM 6.x shortcut.

This new version adds support for controlling AIM 6.x clients that are installed in alternate directories. From my release notes, the new AIM 6.x Advanced tab lets you:

I also added an automatic check for new versions and some minor improvements.

You can read the complete release notes and download it here.

Give this tool a try and let me know what you think. Thanks.

I just released an updated version of the CoreWitness plug-in.

This version adds support for the AIM SDK version 1.3.0 while maintaining backwards compatibility to prior versions. AIM 6.1 uses the AIM SDK Version 1.2.4 while the latest AIM 6.2 beta uses version 1.3.0.

I also added support to dump the contents of the buddy list via the “bl” command. Just open an IM to yourself and send it to see the data in the log window.

IMHO, this is a must have plug-in for developing Open AIM clients and plug-ins. I wouldn’t write a plug-in or develop a client with out it.

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Enjoy.

I released a new version of my IM Tweaks plug-in today. This build contains a few new features. The first feature was by request. Someone asked me, via my AJAX powered anonymous feedback page, to be able to automatically sign in invisibly when AIM automatically started at Windows startup. So, I added an option that will automatically do this when you sign in during the first eight minutes of Windows startup. You have to login fast since the time starts as soon as Windows is functional.

The second feature that was added is the ability to start an IM conversation from the context menu of the buddy list. You can send an IM by clicking the right mouse button on a buddy and then selecting the “Send a Real Quick IM” option. An optional prompt window will open to let you change the default message of “yt?”.

As a side note, this feature was also developed separately by Greg at his aimInfo blog via his Quick IM plug-in. We were both standing at the curb waiting for a taxi while talking about this idea and agreed to implement our own solutions. Since Greg got his version out first, I had no choice but to call my version “Real Quick IM”. What fun. Be on the look out for a “Super Fast Quick IM Deluxe” plug-in real soon. I did say I would be very busy, right?

As a bonus, I added the prompt window and the ability to change the recipient by dragging a buddy from the buddy list and dropping it on the prompt window.

You can see the screen shots and more details here.

Wow, IM Tweaks has already been downloaded by 523 fans. Not bad, considering I have done little to promote it. Imagine the usage if there was a central site where everyone could go to discover all AIM plug-ins.

One last minor feature: IM Tweaks will now automatically check for newer versions. You should see a nice tray balloon message when that happens.

Enjoy. As always, I appreciate your feedback.

Been working long hours the past couple of weeks plus doing some home finishing projects around the house.

It’s crunch time at the office. I will be very busy for the next few weeks. This is where the fun is. I like it when you get to do things that you have never done before and see it all materialize progressively in front of you. I get better at it each time. It’s incredible fun to be in a controlled chaos mode. I highly recommend it. This is when you stop looking at the clock unless it’s after 9PM. I wish every day was like this at work; at least let it be 6PM when I take that first look at the clock.

PeerSketch is limping along in all this. I have not completely abandoned it yet. Rest assured, it will simply be advancing at a slower pace than expected.

I will formally start the development of PeerSketch this Sunday night (7PMish EST). You can get instant updates on my current activity on twitter. More detailed development updates will be posted here. The rest of this posts covers the technology I will use, how AIMcc supports this plug-in, and some of my first steps.

This plug-in will be developed in C++ using ATL and WTL for the application UI. All drawing will be done via GDI+ which exists on Windows XP and above (Microsoft provides an installer for older OSs like Windows 2000). Expat will be used for XML based data transfer. Lastly, AIMcc will provide the plug-in and custom session support.

You send and receive pictures, files, voice, video, etc. to and from your buddy with AIM. These features make use of a common transport mechanism that handles firewalls, does authentication, manages the connection, and transfers the data. One of the unique features in AIMcc is the ability to create custom sessions that take advantage of this transport mechanism in a custom way. You can use it to implement your own version of file transfer or create new interactive sessions of any kind. I will be using this support for this plug-in. You can read more about it here. The complete documentation for AIMcc is here.

The first things I will do is develop a “proof of concept” plug-in and a test environment. The plug-in will exercise the custom session support in AIMcc and answer some questions on the performance and data formats I will get in the two modes I plan to use custom sessions in, which are, Offer/Answer and Stream. Each mode has some trade-offs that I want to identify. The test environment will be a standalone application that I will use to test the drawing and communication functions before I make them a plug-in. This will make it easier to test. As you can see I have plenty to do.

See you Sunday night on Twitter.

I think I left a few things vague about my plug-in proposal. I’ll take this opportunity to clear things up and give you an update.

In case there was any confusion this will not be an open-source plug-in. If you want to contribute with your ideas, please do so with the understanding that you are giving them away for free. Also note that I may have already thought of some of the ideas I receive. All ideas submitted will be treated as public domain, everyone can use it as they see fit. I will have a credits list at the end of this project.

That being said, I will talk openly and freely about the open AIM API and about some of the technology I will use to implement this plug-in.

In my last post, I estimated that this project would take about sixty days to complete. Its been almost 14 days. I have not actually started to code this. I am still in the planning stages and so the sixty days won’t start just yet. So bear with me a bit.

In my next post I will cover some of the technology I will use to develop this plug-in and why I think it’s possible to add this kind of functionality to any Open AIM client.

Today I am going to start by inviting all of you to join me in designing a plug-in. The deal is this: I am your developer. You tell me the features you want, and if I think I can do it, I will estimate the effort, design it, and make it happen. The end result, is a plug-in that we can all use and share. I hope that the effort can be concluded within 60 days. (Remember, I can only work on this in my spare time.)

The plug-in I propose to make is based on an idea that has been around for a while. I want to add the ability in AIM to let you paint on an image that you and your buddy can see in real-time.

Does this sound like a good idea? Remember this plug-in is for you. What would you do with such a plug-in? Draw lines? stamp icons? Write secret messages? What shall we name it?

Please leave your thoughts and ideas as comments. Maybe we can form a chat room and talk about this. Lets see how it goes. The floor is now open to you.

Thanks.

I just released a new version of this plug-in. You can read the complete release notes here. The Idle Lock feature is now vastly improved. You should now be able to activate Idle Lock without any of the previously known problems. Idle Lock also now works when you have multiple AIM clients running with this plug-in loaded. I have also made numerous improvements to the inline commands (corrections and away messages) and IMpulse.

Please give it a try today and let me know what you think.