AOL extended its Open AIM initiative to include support for AIM Bots, location-based services and PC-to-PC voice calling. The update also includes support for developers working on the Mac OS X, Linux, and Pocket PC platforms or with the Java language.
- AIM Bots are dedicated, opt-in Screen Names that help developers, marketers and individuals create new connections and establish strong bonds with contacts in the AIM community. In addition, AIM Bots can support audio calls, file transfers and picture sharing. For example, an AIM Bot could be created to let users send pictures or podcasts to their blogs. AIM Bots respond automatically to instant messages (IMs) they receive and can maintain IM conversations with multiple users - reaching up to 10,000 people per day - before encountering limits. To prevent IM spam, AIM Bots cannot initiate IMs without permission.
- AIM Location services are now part of the Open AIM SDK. The new application program interfaces (APIs) - with sample code - have been added to the SDK to let developers build location services into clients, plugins*** and, in the coming weeks, Web sites.
- AOL is also giving developers the ability to add AIM Talk's PC-to-PC voice functionality and multi-party voice chat into their custom AIM clients. For the first time, developers can integrate audio features based on the open source sipXtapi SIP stack, from sipfoundry.org, into their applications with a single turnkey solution.
AOL said its Open AIM initiative, which was launched in March of this year, encourages companies, communities and independent developers to build customized plugins, communications clients and mash-ups that access AOL's global instant messaging network. The company noted that more than 45,000 developers have its AIM Software Development Kit (SDK).
http://developer.aim.com
