AIM Moves to the Web with AV

I am proud that the last thing I worked on during my 11 years at AOL finally was released yesterday. AIM AV was something that was a long time coming. It addressed two of the bigger weaknesses AIM suffered. It was getting lapped by messaging clients on the web by Meebo and GTalk among others. The other area AV addresses is a new set of audio and video technology.

AV finally starts to get AIM away from the original audio video stack I wrote with others back in 2003 and refreshed in 2006. I am proud of the work we did 5+ years ago when we had the foresight to move away from Microsoft RTC and integrate ON2’s VP7 and Global IP Solutions. Later both those companies were acquired by Google and now make up a major part of WebM.

The new experience lowers the barrier to entry, where anybody can arrive at aim.com/av and immediately start a video conversation with a friend.  With no download necessary, getting non-technical people to use the product is super easy, no Geek Squad required.  Simply just copy and send the link. The team did a great job getting AV out the door and making it the easiest audio and video experience on the internet, congrats guys.

Open AIM and Adobe AIR

Recently an article was written on AOL’s Developer Network site, showing how you can use our Web AIM API ActionScript3 library to build your own AIM client. When Open AIM launched I mentioned that we added Flash AMF3 return values to our Web AIM APIs. In the article the author shares a step-by-step process to getting your environment set up and importing the necessary APIs. In the end you have built an embeddable chat application.

Check out the article here.