Category Archives: AIM MusicLink

AIM MusicLink version 2.1.0.5

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UPDATE 6/9/08 11:00PM EST – The latest AIM MusicLink can be found at the home of AIM MusicLink. (http://www.gregsmind.com/musiclink)

Hot out of the oven for the new year is a new version of AIM MusicLink. I have added a few new features for AIM MusicLink including logging. I now write to an HTML file the time, song, and player so you can keep track of what you are listening to. In addition, I have added code into the installer to confirm that iTunes is installed where AIM MusicLink thinks it should be. If it is not found, then I warn you that iTunes support will not work.

I have tested AIM MusicLink using AIM 6.5 and the latest AIM 6.8 Beta released yesterday. I am using the latest version of iTunes, the latest version of WinAmp, WMP 10 and 11, Yahoo Jukebox, and MediaMonkey. AIM MusicLink also supports Songbird, RealPlayer, and AIM Tunes if you play AIM Tunes outside of the broswer via WinAmp.

By default song logging is turned on, and to turn it off you can access the preferences for AIM MusicLink via the ‘Actions’ menu in the bottom of the buddy list. In the same menu you will see a link to open up your AIM MusicLink Log. Here is a link to what my log looks like. Here are some screenshots from the latest release.

DOWNLOAD AIM MUSICLINK v2.1.0.5

I have added the logging purposely to see if we can narrow down where people say AIM MusicLink is not working for them. If the song is successfully logged, it means AIM MusicLink found the song, but setting it on our host failed. If there is no log item, then AIM MusicLink could not find the song for a variety of reasons.

As always I appreciate the feedback, so please do not hesitate to share it. If AIM MusicLink is not working for you please share the details of media player version and AIM client version.

AIM Mailbag Part II

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Last time on AIM Mailbag, we covered versioning, mobile privacy, colorizing screen names and of course the Mac AIM experience (or lack thereof)…and now the mailbag conclusion.

Q: What are some of the new key features being implemented in the upcoming versions of AIM?

A: I always love these questions, but hate answering them because plans are always changing but in addition since this is a public forum, I cannot share all my cards. With that being said, we continue to make important improvements in connectivity both with regards to just signing in through all sorts of network topology as well as for p2p activities like live audio and video. I think you will see improvements in how developers can interact with the client via plugins, which means that users will have cool add ons and extensions to make their AIM experience more fun. Tighter integration with mobile messaging is in the works, as well as handling all different types of mobile data. Like I said, it is not fun being vague, but we are working on some good stuff that will definitely get you excited in using AIM.

Q: Is AIM coming any closer to being inter operable with GTalk?

A: I was asked this same question in Dublin at MashupCamp a few weeks ago, and I will give the same answer. Both of us continue to work on an interop solution and when there is more to share you know you will be able to find it on this blog.

Q: There haven’t been a lot of AIM custom clients. Are you planning to introduce any yourselves?

A: My team is not actively writing any new custom clients, we have AIM Lite, however we have numerous partners who are writing custom clients right now. I am not sure how many full feature AIM clients you will see on Windows, but other platforms are actively being worked upon. Hopefully our partners will be sharing some news real soon.

Here is a quick list of some custom clients:

– AIM

– AIM Lite

– AIM Pro

– Playlinc

– PCD Lounge

Q: My AIM MusicLink is still not working at all it will not show what song i am listening to through iTunes, WMP 11, or Yahoo Music Jukebox.

A: I have to say this one issue has baffled me. Here is what I am guessing is going on, first if you set yourself away and are expecting MusicLink to work, it will listen for your music, but updating the status will not work. Second, if you have installed iTunes in a directory other than the default path (c:program filesitunes) then MusicLink will not work because we need to import the interfaces to access the iTunes API. So if you have iTunes installed in a path other than the default please point it to the default and then all should work. For the other players I have tested against the latest WMP and Yahoo Music Jukebox as well as 10 of my independent testers and we have not been able to reproduce this case unless we are set as away. If you are experiencing problems what would help beyond AIM version and media player version is to make sure you note what your status is (away, idle, invisible, mobile, etc), and if you are signed in on multiple locations.

Q: Who is AIM’s chief software architect?

A: I never comment on personnel here at AOL, but from the Open AIM SDK point of view I am the lead evangelist/dev guy for Open AIM, thus the reason you will see me at conferences, etc.

Q: What do you and people from AIM dev and IM-Host dev team think about alternative clients that use directly OSCAR protocol, not AIMCC?

A: Interesting question. For those who do not know, OSCAR is AIM’s proprietary protocol for communication. OSCAR is very complex and has lots of antiquated and unused things in it, some of which are specific to AOL clients going back to AOL 5.0, and some of which are deprecated. Much like the reason why we did not open up the low layer libraries in AIM known as COOL, we feel like from an elegance and simplicity view, the Web AIM APIs and AIMCC provide a more manageable way of writing clients. In addition, things like libPurple and other libraries do not always interact with the protocol properly. Anyone notice that their buddy lists are not always displayed properly or that Adium does not do file transfer properly? As we evolve the protocol obviously things like Web AIM and AIMCC incorporate the changes immediately, while the unofficial libraries are slow to get these changes if at all.

Post Thanksgiving Thoughts

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A quick post today on some developments over the weekend. First, we continue to research with Microsoft the Vista issue, though as I mentioned in the post last week, all indications are that this issue is not related to AIM. For the user who reported that un-installing Vista Update (KB94169), are you sure that it is in fact the correct update? My research shows that KB94169 is a patch for Windows 3.x for “IBM 4226 Printer Emulation.” If we can get that actual patch ID we would definitely appreciate it, as would the engineers in Redmond.

I have been getting a lot of feedback on AIM Music Link which is terrific. I have been looking into reported issues with Yahoo Jukebox, iTunes 7.5 and Windows Media Player 11. I am unable to reproduce the problem that status does not update. The only thing I can think of is that you may be away when playing the song. I have seen issues where status will not update when you are away.

For the person asking if I could add support for Zune, I spent a hour this afternoon looking into this, and have not found any API associated with the Zune Media Player version 2.1.888.0. I even looked into screen scraping the song, and so far no luck. If someone has figured this out, please share, and I will definitely add the support.

Lastly, I want to do a mailbag this week, so if you have questions you would like answered about AIM, Open AIM, or just general questions about social networking and media, please just leave a comment below, and I will get to as many of the questions as I can.

Thoughts from across the pond.

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I am over in Dublin for the weekend to give a couple of presentations at MashupCamp, and to do a presentation at our AOL offices. If you are in the Dublin area or at the conference make sure to stick around until after lunch, have a beer, and come listen to a talk about Open AIM and OpenAuth.

I already see there is some feedback on the latest AIM MusicLink I released on Thursday, and I have tried reproducing a few of the issues reported. Namely that iTunes 7.5 results in the song playing not appearing in your status or profile. I downloaded iTunes 7.5.0.20 and with the latest AIM MusicLink and the latest AIM client, I had no issues. I am planning on looking at Windows Media Player 11 to see if something broke, but again it is an API that SHOULD be backward compatible. Make sure you are setting your preferences, and that you are not setting yourself as away, and everything should be working.

I will be posting my presentations from today on the blog later today so check back tomorrow and they will be up there. In addition, I have added some of my older presentations from 2006 to page, so if you want to see what was going on back then, you can now reference them.

New AIM MusicLink

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UPDATE 6/9/08 11:00PM EST – The latest AIM MusicLink can be found at the home of AIM MusicLink. (http://www.gregsmind.com/musiclink)

I finished up a new version of AIM MusicLink version 2.0.0.4 last night based on feedback I was getting on the previous release. In version 2.0.0.4, I have added support for MediaMonkey, so AIM MusicLink now supports 7 different media players:

  • iTunes
  • WinAmp (version 5.5)
  • Windows MediaPlayer (version 10+)
  • Yahoo Jukebox
  • Real Player
  • Songbird (must manually install included extension)
  • MediaMonkey

I have also fixed a few bugs. First the situation of the first character being cut off. I had real trouble reproducing a case where I saw this, but I figured during streaming of music to WinAmp or Yahoo is where this would occur. In addition I fixed a problem where your status could be set to “[Buffering…” if you were listening to AIM Tunes songs in WinAmp. I also added an “About” screen via the new IAccCommand flag AccCommandFlag_AboutUi.

Here is the new about screen:

To access the preferences click the actions menu as shown and choose “AIM MusicLink Preferences”

Once you set the preferences you will start seeing your status and profile updated like this:

You can download the plugin here and as always I appreciate any feedback you guys have.

AIM Dashboard

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Soon after we launched AIM 6.5 we launched the AIM Dashboard. This web page is an aggregate view of your status messages and status messages of your buddies. It also displays an aggregate view of updates your buddies have made to things like Buddy Info, Pictures, even Flickr. When we launched Buddy Feeds last year the best way of viewing the buddy feed is by clicking on the buddy feed indicator on the buddy list. Now this web page will provide a clear and concise picture of things you and your buddies want to share with each other. Here is my AIM Dashboard where you can view what I have been up too. You can manage the Buddy Update settings and what your buddies can see about you, such as away message updates or status message update, by navigating to the settings page. If you are a user of AIM MusicLink the current song that gets stored as the status message is now kept in the history view of your Dashboard.

The journey to Tel Aviv is going well. One funny thing to share with you about the trip, on the way to Tel Aviv from Frankfurt, Germany, our Lufthansa plane had to restart the in-flight video system at our seats. Sure enough we saw the boot screen and the operating system for Lufthansa is Windows CE. Here is a picture of what we saw:

Lufthansa Inflight A/V System