It may have taken longer than even its own creators might have guessed, but it’s finally come to pass: Brizzly, the Twitter/Facebook client that was bought by AOL as part of Thing Labs in September 2010, is shutting up shop at the end of March, with the news announced last night on Brizzly’s blog by Grant Shellen, and co-signed by Zachary Taylor and Jason Shellen, Brizzly’s and Thing Labs’… → Read More
Since 2007, you’ve been able to sign in to your AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account to chat with your AIM contacts directly from Gmail. You simply login with your AIM account in Gmail and your contacts will populate your gChat list, allowing you to chat with them just like you would your Google Talk contatcs.
From this notice, it looks like changes may be afoot to this feature. From AIM’s notice… → Read More
Earlier today, AOL’s Head of AIM Products Jason Shellen sent an email to the entire company urging people not to share its contents with people outside of the company. Even though we’re a part of AOL, we didn’t get that email. Well, that is until someone was kind enough to leak it to us. Hey, we are not outside of the company so that’s fair right? And since we didn’t technically get the email, I… → Read More
Well, this is kind of awkward.
A couple weeks ago, we reported that AOL was in the process of acquiring of Thing Labs, makers of Brizzly. Neither AOL or Thing Labs would comment at the time, but we had multiple good sources on the deal. Fast forward to today: AOL is finally confirming the deal — right after they just acquired us.
So yes, like we said, AOL is acquiring Thing Labs. Only now… → Read More
AOL has been seriously testing lifestreaming in various betas for AIM and AIM Connect for a few months now. At TechCrunch50, AOL just announced that lifestreaming will come out of beta on September 22 and will be part of the AIM product portfolio across Windows, Macs, the Web, iPhones and Windows Mobile.
Last week, the paid version of AIM for the iPhone was updated with lifestreaming… → Read More
A few months ago AOL found a way to fuse AIM, its popular instant messenger client, with the broader messaging systems like Facebook and Twitter that have begun increasingly important on the web. AIM now includes a new tab dedicated to the lifestream — a combination of your friends’ activities on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, AIM itself, and a variety of other services (think of it as a FriendFeed… → Read More
In July, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) embraced the stream in a new beta (for both Windows and Mac) and started moving beyond simple IMs. You can now see your Facebook and Twitter feeds, along with AIM buddy updates and feeds from other services.
The problem was that the Twitter and Facebook feeds were only one way. You could read them, but you couldn’t send updates from AIM to the other services. → Read More
AOL took another step towards fully embracing the lifestream today with the release of a slew of new AIM clients in beta and a new AIM Lifestream site, which brings together status updates from your AIM buddies with your activity streams from Facebook and Twitter. Earlier today, AOL quietly launched beta versions of AIM 7 for Windows, AIM for Mac 2.0, and a new AIM Windows Mobile client. (An… → Read More
There’s been a lot of talk the past few days since the launch of the iPhone 3.0 software about the lack of Push Notification apps in the App Store. Well, today brings a big one: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).
Instant messaging apps are perhaps the perfect use for Push Notification, which allows you to use such services without requiring that they be open at all time. In our test of the pre-release… → Read More
Earlier today, Apple sent out an email (embedded below) to developers who are testing the latest iPhone 3.0 software, asking them to help do one final stress test the new Push Notification service. The app picked for this test was AOL’s AIM instant messaging application, which makes sense given that IM apps are likely to be the apps that end up using Push Notification the most.
Push Notification… → Read More
While there may still be a lot of confusion surrounding the future of AOL, that didn’t stop the folks in Northern Virginia from recently overhauling their popular AIM instant messaging app for iPhone (and iPod touch). Available in two tasty flavors, free (“AIM Free”) and paid (“AIM Paid”), AIM 2.0 for iPhone now provides SMS notifications, has location-aware services… → Read More
It was only a few days ago that we tore into the 20 dollar IM+ application for being overpriced, buggy, and lacking anything that justified that 20 dollar price tag. At the tail-end of that review, we expressed our hopes that an IM app done right would come along soon. Enter Meebo for Android, brought to you by the same people behind the awesome browser-based IM application of the same name. → Read More
If you’re a devoted IM’er and have owned a BlackBerry or a pre-App-Store iPhone, you probably know of BeeJive – or at least know it by its previous name, Jivetalk. Their BlackBerry IM solution is generally considered the best IM offering on the platform, and the BeeJive iPhone Web App nailed out a solid instant messaging solution long before full blown third party applications… → Read More
Pic via MobileBurn.com With a notable chunk of the mobile market being made up of IM-addicted hooligans, a solid AIM application is pretty much an absolute must for any platform. It’s somewhere that Windows Mobile has been lagging behind for years – while there are plenty of AIM offerings for the devices, the vast majority look and run like they were designed for Windows 3.1x rather… → Read More
People with landline phones take notice for VTech has announced something pretty cool. Their latest cordless phone, the IS6110, does IM between phones and comes with a QWERTY keyboard. When the base unit is plugged into your PC via USB you can chat over MSN, Windows Live and AIM. The IS6110 retails for $100 and is available at Best Buy. → Read More
Previously available by invite only, mundu is now available to the rest of us. It allows you to use your Yahoo!, Google, MSN, and AIM accounts with ease. Emphasis on “ease.” I was up and running and logged in on my iPod Touch in under a minute. Very, very simple stuff here. You’re able to be logged in to more than one service at a time and you can make your own status messages… → Read More
No more futzing with Safari IM solutions, kids. The iPhone has it’s own native messaging apps. First, there’s Apolloim, a super beta AIM client for the iPhone. It seems to work, but it’s completely untested. Next, you have ircm, an IRC client so you can tell n00bs to GTFO. Both have full source code available and it will be interesting to see how long before they escape from… → Read More
The lack of IM on the iPhone was a huge deterrent for me other than the network it runs on as well as a few other features that weren’t included on the $500+ phone. But Cerulean Studios is pulling some overtime to get Trillian Astra for those users who braved the waters to be the first to have Apple’s latest wonder. So what’s going on with the Beta? → Read More
At some point in the late morning, I woke up. I do that sometimes. I try to at least once a day. And, as I normally do when I wake, I opened my laptop to get to work. I’m a Mac user, so I use iChat for much of my online communications. The program auto-logs-me-on when the machine wakes up, and I noticed I had friends online I’d never seen before. Who was Spleak? Who was Prof Gilzot? I… → Read More
Calling London or just about anywhere else internationally has always been pretty expensive. VoIP services, including Skype, have helped ease the pain of those massive ultra-long distance bills, but this just meant you were tethered to a computer. EQO Mobile could be the answer to affordable international long distance. This new service promises to reduce the costs of international calls by up to… → Read More
While there are software apps that will already let you use multiple IM programs, the Dutch have now made it possible to chat from virtually any computer or mobile device. eBuddy provides Web and mobile instant messaging services, enabling you to chat with your MSN, Yahoo and AIM contacts without actually having to download or install any software. Read the rest at MobileCrunch… → Read More
I can totally understand why Blackberry owners are sighing in relief right now. The Blackberry’s lack of a decent IM client or dedicated AIM client made me not want to use my Blackberry half the time. Now an official AIM client, Live Messenger, and ICQ client have all been officially released by RIM… sort of. The downloads are freely available, but you must update the service books… → Read More
AOL’s wildly popular IM program, AIM, has released version 6.0 of its software tonight. When you’re a global giant, you don’t have to lead the state of the art (unless you’re Google) – you can just follow the lead of the best startups that haven’t near the market share you have. That’s especially true of AIM, who has perhaps the ultimate bragging rights… → Read More
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