From this notice, it looks like changes may be afoot to this feature. From AIM’s notice, In the next few days, Google and AOL are working together to change the way you connect to AIM buddies within Gmail. After this change, Gmail and AIM users can talk directly to each other without having to log into both services (you will no longer be able to log into AIM within Gmail’s “Chat” section).

It’s unclear what technology Google and AOL are working on that will allow users to integrate both services with Gmail; but AOL says it is working on an importer to add AIM contacts to your Gmail contacts list. AOL says in the notice: You’ll be able to IM them directly from your Gmail username, but your AIM Username will not show your online status.

AOL says the change will take place in the next few days, but you can sign up to receive a notice when new importer is available.

But honestly, who uses AIM anymore?

Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by AOL.

Anyway.

AOL is on the verge of launching a “shiny new video chat product dubbed ‘AV’”. And it actually looks pretty good. It’s video chat, but super-simple. You don’t need an account to use it. You don’t need anything (besides, sadly, Flash installed on your computer). You hit the homepage, start a chat, get a link, and send that to friends. Up to four people can chat at once.

I’ve been playing around with it for a bit. It is super simple and well done. Aside from video chatting, you can text chat and it overlays on your stream in a nice way. You can also make your stream wider and freeze it.

Still in beta for now, Shellen notes that it “represents a lot of hard work by the AIM team over the last few months.” He also says that it’s the first of “several” new AIM launches coming soon. All will be web-focused.

The video chat play is a smart one. This is a space that is heating up really quickly. Apple has FaceTime across their devices, Chatroulette is supposedly making a comeback, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker are back at work on Supyo (yes, Mike is an investor), and even Skype is back in the news about possible partnerships with Facebook or Google for their technology.

Speaking of Google, we’ve been hearing for months that they’re working on something similar to AV. And I suspect we’ll be hearing more about that shortly.

The point of Shellen’s email today was to share AV internally with AOLers to test it out. But we’re gonna do him one better. We’re going to share the link here so all of you can help test it out! Here she is!

AOL is hosting a product summit at their west coast HQ in Palo Alto next week. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about AV there. For now, enjoy.

Below, Shellen’s email to the troops. Reached for comment, Shellen refused to and seemed annoyed. Hey, it was either us publishing this or Business Insider, right? We’re brothers!

People of AOL,

AIM is proud to present you with a super secret internal launch (shhh!) of our shiny new video chat product dubbed “AV”. Still in beta, AV is a major step forward that represents a lot of hard work by the AIM team over the last few months.

AV is incredibly easy to use: Visit the home page, start a chat, get a link to send out, and you and up to three other people are video chatting in no time. There’s no account or login required, so there’s very little barrier to entry. Plus… it’s FUN!

As you may know, this is the first of several substantial new AIM launches and the first to represent our shift in focus to better web software. While you might have been one of our early testers of the entire new AIM effort, this is just the video portion and we’ll be in touch soon as the rest rolls out.

What I’m asking of you is to:

1. Use the product by checking out the link below, only with fellow Aol team members.
2. Give us feedback and bug reports through the “Feedback” link in the product.
3. DO NOT SHARE THIS WITH ANYONE OUTSIDE AOL!
4. Sorry, my “caps lock” key got stuck on during number 3. But seriously, don’t do it.

Enjoy: http://aim.com/av

Sincerely,

JASON SHELLEN
Head of AIM Products
P: XXX.XXX.XXXX AIM: XXXXXXXX
Palo Alto | NYC | Dulles

PS: To the ACG team for whom this email will seem oddly familiar, thank you for your help in providing feedback on our alpha version over the past few weeks. Please give us another spin now that we’ve worked out the kinks and keep giving us feedback so we can continue to improve.

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, it’s technically our parent company that is buying them. So congrats to us, I guess?!

Here’s the key blurb from the release:

The Brizzly team will play a key role in helping AOL provide consumers with the best possible venues to discover and share content with each other. Over time, AOL expects to integrate aspects of the Brizzly service into its popular Lifestream product, its social aggregator and publisher, and AIM, AOL’s flagship messaging platform. The Brizzly team will join AOL’s Consumer Applications Group, where Thing Labs Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jason Shellen and Christopher Wetherell, Vice President of Product and Engineering, will lead the AIM product suite, including Lifestream.

As we suspected, this is mainly a talent play. Shellen and Wetherell will be leading the important AIM product. But what we weren’t sure of is if Brizzly the product would live on. Apparently, it may — but perhaps only in spirit.

It sounds like AOL will integrate Brizzly features into their Lifestream product. Coincidentally (or maybe not) Brizzly just released some new features today.

Update: Things Labs has posted more on the Brizzly blog. According to them:

First things first: Brizzly is sticking around. Of course anything can happen in the future, but nowhere on our list of things to do is there a “KILL BRIZZLY” item.

And:

Some or all parts of Brizzly will live on at AOL. One of the reasons we joined forces is that AOL recognized the great products we’d built and saw places where Brizzly, the Brizzly Guide and especially Picnics could tie in with some of their efforts.

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 capabilities. Today, lifestreaming is coming out of beta across AIM 7 for Windows, AIM for Mac, AIM for the Web, and AIM for Windows Mobile.

The lifestream is AOL’s way of melding instant messaging with social streams from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube Digg, and Flickr. Initially it was just one-way, but recently AOL turned on two-way communications for Twitter and Facebook in the AIM beta so that you can update your status on those two services from within AIM. The beta is being used by about 150,000 people. On September 22, those features will be rolled out across the entire AIM user base of 20 million people.

David Liu, the senior vice-president who’s been leading the lifestreaming charge within AOL, notes that on average users in the AIM 7 beta send 20 percent more IMs than other users. The increased engagement is partly because the lifestream draws them in and gives them another reason to open the app. But the new AIM is also far zippier. “It is faster and lighter than all the major competitors via lab testing,” claims Liu (the competitors being Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and Skype).

As part of the launch, AIM Connect will also be integrated with AddThis across all AOL Media sites to hook back into their lifestreams on AIM, so that they can share content and web pages with their AIM buddies.

Video:
http://www.ustream.tv/flash/video/2167124

Other Coverage:
AOL embraces Twitter, Facebook with AIM Lifestream CNET.
AOL Integrates LifeStream into AIM AppScout.
TC50: AIM opens up; pegs its future on mobile apps VentureBeat.
AIM Debuts Lifestream Twitter Client ReadWriteWeb.

The new iPhone app will let you monitor updates from all the services supported by the desktop version of Lifestream. The app also lets you simultaneously post your AIM status updates to Twitter and Facebook — while the Lifestream was read-only until recently (you couldn’t post messages to services other than AIM), the service recently enabled this functionality.

Other new additions to the app include photo uploading, photo viewing on the Lifestream, and various UI improvements.

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. A few weeks ago that changed, and AIM status updates can now appear as updates in Facebook and Twitter as well. There also appears to be a way to comment, or respond, inline to other people’s messages, although I am having trouble getting that feature to work for some reason.

Going both ways turns AIM into a full-fledged Twitter/Facebook client. It is a big deal for AIM because now it can be used as both a private and public IM client. While stream readers such as TweetDeck and Seesmic already have two-way messaging capabilities with Twitter and Facebook, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger are still stuck in Read-Only Land.

The AIM Beta doesn’t have the Twitter integration working perfectly yet. Some updates and comments seem to never get through, while others do just fine. On the Facebook side, it is working much smoother. But AIM is making the right moves in an attempt to become an all-in-one instant communications hub. AOL’s new communications chief, Brad Garlinghouse, should keep pushing in this direction.

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 upgrade to its iPhone app cannot be far behind).

All three of the AIM betas include a new “Lifestream” tab, which allows you to read all of the updates from your friends on Facebook and Twitter, along with public status updates from your AIM buddies. You can also share videos and links via your YouTube and Delicious accounts. Expect more services to be added. The AIM clients also include the familiar “Buddies” tab, which lets you launch private IM conversations with your AIM buddies, and a “Me” tab shows your profile stats, updates, and notifications.

What AOL is doing here is combining a FriendFeed-style approach of bringing together social updates from different services across the web with more private IM conversations. AIM status messages function as public utterances, and already on the AIM Lifestream site you can upload photos and comment on or indicate that you “like” a particular message from a buddy (expect these features to make its way into the clients soon as well). AOL is not so much trying to copy Twitter or FriendFeed as it is trying to bridge the private one-on-one message stream of AIM with the more public social conversation streams across the Web.

Inserting the lifestream into AIM is part of a much larger strategy, which began with its acquisition of Socialthing nearly a year ago. Last February, it brought Socialthing-powered lifestreams into Bebo, and last April it began experimenting with bringing lifestreaming and chat to Websites via a chat toolbar. That effort soon spread to other AOL sites and recently was renamed AIM Connect. (Guess who it is trying to compete against with that product).

The AIM beta clients provide further clues about where AOL is going, but are not yet fully-baked products. The Twitter and Facebook streams are only one-way, for instance. AIM can obviously support two-way communications (one of the big selling points of Socialthing), but AOL probably needs to negotiate that with Twitter and Facebook first. It could also use a URL shortener to make it easier to pass links. But AIM is huge, with around 50 million active users. I wonder how fast it would take for AIM to become one of the top Twitter clients.

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 beta version of the AIM app with Push, the messages were sent almost instantaneously. In testing it out right now, it looks to be just as fast.

When you first fire up this new version of AIM, it asks you if you’d like to receive Push notifications. You can change this at any time in the settings. And you can also choose if you’d like the notifications to be brief (only say that you have a new IM), feature the sender’s name only, be normal size, or full size.

You can also set how you’d like Push messages to show up on your phone for each app in the device’s settings. You can have it pop up a message, play a sound, badge your icon or do any combination of those.

And Push works with both the free [iTunes link] and paid version [iTunes link] of the app. The $2.99 paid version removes all advertising.

Push is great for services like IM, but it doesn’t resolve the lack of iPhone background support for all apps. With Push you still can’t listen to Pandora while doing something else on the web, for example. I still believe it’s only a matter of time before we see some sort of third-party background task support as well.

Update: While users are reporting that they aren’t receiving notifications to update their apps yet, if you use the links above, it is the latest version with Push.

Push Notification, for those who haven’t been following news about it for the past year, is the system Apple developed to alleviate the fact that it won’t allow third party apps to run in the background of the iPhone. Apple claims there are security concerns, battery life concerns and performance concerns that prevent background apps from being feasible at this time on the iPhone (though the company is considering ways to do background apps in the future). Instead, it has asked developers to use its servers to push out certain tasks (like IMs) that come to your phone even when that application isn’t running.

Apple first talked about Push Notification a year ago at WWDC, and said it should be available around September of 2008. When that deadline came and went, Apple was largely silent, only remarking briefly that the system wasn’t yet ready and it wanted to make sure it was perfect before rolling it out. A smart move considering the rough start its MobileMe service go off to. So we waited and waited, until finally Apple announced that it would be a part of the iPhone 3.0 software, due out June 17.

Watch the video below to see Push Notification in action with AIM. One quick note: The video makes it look like there may be a delay between an IM sent and received, but I’m told it’s basically instantaneous — under a second.

[thanks Kyle]

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, and supports multiple accounts (among other updates). It appears as though all of the application updates have been included in both the free and paid versions, with the major (and obvious) difference being the inclusion of ads in the buddy list of the AIM Free app.

So, what’s the big deal here? What do all the changes mean? Well, for one thing, now when you first sign in, the app will ask you if you want to share your current location:

Want to see where your friends are hanging out? You can share your location with your Buddies (or everyone) and see Buddies who are sharing their location.

Users are given three options: 1. No, don’t share location (default); 2. Share only with people on my Buddy list; or 3. Share with everyone. Once you’ve made your selection (let’s say we pick option 2 or 3), a new Group will be added – “Near Me” – showing other contacts within your vicinity.  As Ars Technica points out, “there is no control over how large one’s nearby radius is” and thus, it is not exactly clear how near or far any of your contacts may be from your current location. What you can control, is the frequency of your location updates by navigating to: My Info > Preferences > (scroll down) Frequency.  Here, you can select between 3 options: 1. On Startup; 2. Every 5 min. (default); or 3. Every 2000 feet.

Beyond location-awareness, AIM 2.0 also features SMS capabilities. Users now have the option to send an IM to a screen name, or alternatively, can send an SMS to a contact’s phone number (works on both iPhone and iPod touch). The app now includes both a buddy list and a contact list, to take advantage of these new features. Also, you can now stay logged-in for up to 24 hours, even if the AIM app has been closed.  This allows you (iPhone users only) to get notifications via SMS when you receive a new IM and offers a work-around until Apple enables real Push notifications.

Other notable new features include the ability to use photos (taken with an iPhone) as buddy icons and the option to configure/switch between multiple screen names at any time. Are these new features enough to take down competing IM apps such as IM+, Fring, Truphone, and others? Only time will tell.

AIM Free (2.0.1) is currently available for download (via iTunes), while the cleverly named (but as yet unpriced) AIM Paid is still pending approval (at the time of this writing).

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. It’s got a clean interface, is dead simple to use, and best of all: it’s FREE. Game over, IM+.

Meebo is a true replacement for Android’s out-of-the-box IM client, supporting simultaneous logins for AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, ICQ, and Jabber. Through a day of fairly rigorous testing, Meebo ran smoothly in the background without any notable hiccups. I always fear that I’ll miss an important IM when a chat app decides to silently off itself – fortunately, Meebo plops an icon onto Android’s notification bar as an “Ongoing” alert, providing a bit of constant reassurance. Just like the taskbar on your computer, Meebo’s icon will reflect if you have messages and display them for a short time to see if they are worth replying to.

For a first release, it’s already well on its way in the right direction. The only gripe we have at the moment is the lack of configuration options for away messages, notifications.. or anything else, for that matter. With that said, it still obliterates IM+ and the default IM application on Android. Check it out on the Android Market and give it a whirl!

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 were an option. Over the weekend, BeeJiveIM made the jump out of the Web App realm, with its first iPhone App Store release.

With a handful of free IM applications (IM+, Palringo) already out there, BeeJiveIMs $16 dollar price tag might incite a few nasty words from first-glance pessimists. Sure, it’s a bit blingy – but for anybody who IMs on the iPhone for more than a few minutes a day, it’s worth it. This thing is looking to be the best iPhone IM solution by leaps and bounds. Compared to the free solutions which seem to have a hell of a time just staying open, we’ve seen nothing but stability from BeeJiveIM.

Whatever your IM platform of choice may be, BeeJiveIM probably supports it. In the initial release, it’s ready for AIM, MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, Jabber, and Myspace IM. If you’ve got MobileMe or Exchange/ActiveSync set up, BeeJive can send you messages to alert you of new IMs when the application is closed, serving as a temporary alternative to the ever absent Push notifications everyone’s waiting for. It also features chat history, support for sending SMS over AIM/Yahoo, and for the sake of clumsy fingered fools like myself, landscape keyboard support.

Be on the look out for our full review in just a few days.

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 than any modern UI.

Realizing this, AIM has spent the last few months cranking away at their new official WinMo offering and is finally ready to remove the “beta” subtitle. The download is pretty big, according to MobileBurn, the application itself gobbles up the bandwidth. After you’ve checked to make sure you’re not paying by the kilobyte, grab the new client by pointing your handset at http://wap.aol.com/

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.

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 and remove contacts directly. It also handles smileys.

Best of all, there’s nothing to install. Just point your iPhone’s browser (iPod Touch, too) to iphone.mundu.com and you’ll be good to go.

Mundu IM for Apple iPhone [MobileWhack]

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 beta.

iPhone double header: First native IM client AND first native IRC released [TUAW]

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?

Currently the contact list and message windows are up and running. You can see the status of your contacts they update. You can send and receive messages in real-time, as long as your browser window is open. There is no need to move Windows (what a backward concept! ) around on the phone, as everything is compact and fit tight to the screen. This beauty is completed with a smooth and true-to-the-pixel user interface done right. This interface of Trillian Astra is designed for iPhone; it doesn’t just “happen to work” with it.

Cerulean is looking for testers, so hurry on over and sign up. If you’re a Mac user then you get a special treat.

One More Thing… [Cerulean Studios]

So I decided to ask them. When I messaged Prof Gilzot, who sounds like an alien PH.D., he responded very quickly.

Me: Uh, hey. Who’re you?

Prof Gilzot: Hm? Type menu or help.

How rude. At this point I knew he was a bot, but where did he come from? And what did he do?

I asked with “help”, and got this:

Here is a list of things Prof Gilzot can do. Type in a selection and enjoy! 1. Challenge yourself to a question. 2. How am I doing Prof? 3. Top 10 Results 4. New Questions Alert 5. Email Test Results 6. Refer a friend.

The only thing worse than an uninvited IM bot is one who speaks of himself in the third person. Lame. But a trivia bot? It could be worse. I love trivia, so I’ll bite. I picked 1. The prof said I could choose between math tests, sentence completion, or vocabulary. That’s not trivia, yo. That’s SAT lingo.

So I went to Google, and sure enough, the professor, as well as Spleak, sharethisdotcom, the WSJ and Moviefone had appeared on other’s lists as well, and people weren’t happy.

My buddy list is mine. The people on there are (for the most part) people I know and care about and chat with through the day as I blog and work the day job. I find out where the good shows are, what party is what weekend, and find out if Paris is still in jail or living the gilded life. My buddy list is my link outside of my office and outside of my work, a way to be social on-demand. I love it. It is mine, and I should control it.

Because of this, the idea of virtual bots introduced to my lovely list without my consent rubbed me the wrong way. I’m 31 years old. I am not going to take the SAT anytime soon. And my research indicated Spleak was a 21-year-old girl bot, but not in the way she should be. She’s a gossipbot, relating the latest staggering headlines about Hollywood’s crappy actors, sex scandals, drug busts, and undeserving celebs. That is so annoying. While I love making fun of those cats and kittens, I’m fine with what I overhear from people I know IRL. I don’t need help in AIM. She’s Perez Hilton, but interactive. I’m not ready for that. Nobody is. (Sorry Perez.)

Then there’s the WSJ (Wall Street Journal, n00b), the old-skool financial paper and it’s up-to-the-minute stats. Sure, it could be handy, but does it fit with the others? What about sharethisdotcom? I sent this bot a message and never heard back. Now that’s more rude than the professor ever was. I’m being ignored by online virtual robots. Can you imagine how that feels?

Surely Moviefone would cheer me up. We’ve all heard the Moviefone guy before, and hearing a familiar voice is just what I needed. I said “hi” and Moviefone asked me for the actor’s name I liked. I’ve been in a handful of student and indie films, so I entered my own name. The Moviefone bot told me that I’m not in any currently showing films in my zipcode. Now I was really depressed. Virtual lifeforms ignore me, and I’m not a movie star.

I’m keeping Moviefone though. Had I entered Johnny Depp, I’d know where and when I could see that movie about Pirates. Sure, I could just look online, but if I’m mobile and using mobile AIM, this is faster than waiting for my smartphone’s browser to load and navigating to the page. That’s cool.

But Spleak and Prof Gilzot and WSG and sharethisdotcom and whoever else have to go. As stated before, my buddy list is mine. It’s not AOL’s playground for marketing. Don’t get me wrong, I like chatbots. But I want to pick the bots I use. Adding arbitrary bots to my list without telling me amounts to buddyspam, and AOL should know better than to invent new ways to piss people off.

Oh, and for the record, the complete the sentence questions the professor asks are great. I think he’s trying to impress Spleak.

After a small dinner salad and good conversation at LA’s hot habitat 2 bistro, onlookers weren’t surprised to learn that Lindsay Lohan is __________.

a) not in rehab, where she should be
b) more drunk than Keith Richards at a tour launch and New Years party wrapped in one
c) overrated
d) all of the above
e) no, really, it’s all of the above

I read it from the WSJ bot. Just sayin’.

Additionally users could look forward to free IM chat with MSN, Yahoo, AIM, GoogleTalk, ICQ and Jabber. The service, which EQO Mobile claims is powered by a small software application, and is available as a free download and installs itself automatically, let’s user keep their current phone and plan. EQO supports hundreds of mobile handsets, and the service is now available in 20 Europe countries, as well as the United States.

EQO Mobile

Read the rest at MobileCrunch…