Greg’s Mind

I want to say thank you to all the people who have downloaded the latest AIM MusicLink version 2.2.0.0 and are using it every day. The uptake for the plugin has been really great, and I have to be honest this release has gone much better than earlier ones. I wanted to address some of the issues people have been having.

• I have fixed the problem with the Songbird Extension for AIM MusicLink and you can download the extension here. Once you download the extension, please use Songbird to load the sbMusicLink.xpi file.
• I have spent a few hours testing this version of AIM MusicLink with Windows Media Player 11 in just about every configuration possible and cannot reproduce any of the reports people have. All my WMP plugin does is listen to the current playing song and then writes to the Windows Registry if the player is playing and if so what is the current song. Then AIM MusicLink reads the registry key. These two keys can be found in HKCU\Software\AIM\AIMPlugins\AIM MusicLink\WMPCurrentMedia and WMPIsPlaying. If you observe weird behavior with these keys please let me know.
• The latest WinAMP version has been working for me.
• The theory I have regarding those who have issues with players beyond iTunes working, is that make sure iTunes is truly closed. I have seen instances where I close iTunes yet it is not truly shutdown. AIM MusicLink will still think it sees iTunes opened and try to set the iTunes song not WinAmp or other player you are using. AIM MusicLink has a specific order of operations that it looks for music. The first player it finds music for, it will try to report the result, even if no song is loaded on the player in some cases. Here is the order that I use:

1. iTunes
2. WinAmp
3. MediaMonkey
4. Windows Media Player 9/10/11
5. Yahoo Jukebox
6. Songbird
7. RealPlayer

Please make sure if you are seeing issues where AIM MusicLink is reporting an incorrect or unexpected result, check the above list and make sure that a player is not accidentally loaded that you think you closed. As always I appreciate all the feedback, and keep it coming so I can make sure AIM MusicLink continues to be the top AIM Plugin.

A post on TechCrunch caught my attention this morning. Schmap is launching their city guides for the iPhone and iPodTouch. These free travel guides are a nice way to get info on a city online or offline. As readers of this blog know, I travel a lot to meet with developers who are building Open AIM applications and to evangelize Open AIM. Schmap city guides can be browsed online or offline, so before I get onto the plane I usually download Schmap so I can browse a city guide in flight. Schmap caught my attention last year when they asked to use one of my photos on Flickr that I took during W3C for their city guide for Calgary. If you are doing a lot of travel this summer, check out Schmap as an alternative or supplement to TripAdvisor or other online travel sites.

PS - Here is the photo that Schmap used from my Calgary collection:

It has been an eternity (well more like 5 years), but we have released a new AOL client for the Mac. The client will run on both MacTel and PPC for Leopard and Tiger.

So far the reviews have been very good for this application, so if you are a long time AOL user on the Mac check out the latest build.

http://macblog.aol.com/media/ADM-FullWidthFlyout.jpg

One thing about this client that is worth pointing out is the buddy list and IM functionality in the client is powered by the Open AIM Mac SDK. The Mac SDK contains framework for applications to be written using Cocoa. This framework is the same that powers our experimental AIM Lite client for the Mac that we released in January of this year. You can view the source for this experimental client in the Mac SDK. We are starting to see more applications being written for platforms other than Windows which is really exciting.

I know the AOL Mac team would love to have some feedback on their work. They have a blog where you can keep up with the latest info and where you can share your thoughts on the client.

I am posting a new AIM MusicLink tonight based on feedback from all my users. I have fixed a long standing bug with the MediaMonkey player, so for those of you using MediaMonkey for your media player needs, you will now see status updates.

I have also added support to insert a music note in your status message when using AIM MusicLink. Here is an image of the new music note support.

AIM MusicLink is an Open AIM plugin, it sets your status and profile message to your current playing song on 7 different media players. I support WinAmp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Yahoo Jukebox, Songbird, RealPlayer, and MediaMonkey. AIM MusicLink also logs the songs that you play and stores them in a log where you can view what you have been listening to all week. To get started with AIM MusicLink just download the exe, exit AIM, and install AIM MusicLink. Re-start AIM, and listen to your favorite music. If you want to change and of the preferences, they can be found in the Actions menu at the bottom of the AIM buddy list.

I want to thank everyone for their feedback, AIM MusicLink depends on your feedback for new features and bug fixes. AIM MusicLink is the most popular download on the AIM Gallery and one of the most popular AIM plugins of all time, so it goes without saying, thanks for all the support.

Download AIM MusicLink version 2.2.0.0 here.

We updated the Open AIM development website today based on some feedback from developers as well as to correct two minor bugs with our source code samples. The big addition is to post our Visual Basic custom client sample to the web page. You can now view how to build a VB custom client and how to implement preferences, send IMs, view Buddy Profiles and more.

The other change we made was to our technotes for Buddy Info and seemless sign on to expressions and AIM startpage URLs.

As always we appreciate the feedback on our development website so please share what we can make better below. If there are specific samples people are looking for we can add them as well.

I am off to Tel Aviv and ICQ tonight so there will be only sporadic updates next week. Before I go though, one of my loyal readers mentioned that with the number of plugins available now, the Actions menu is getting crowded. We have been supporting multiple plugin command entry points for a while, but the latest AIM client built off of the Open AIM platform supports the following actions (to read all about plugin commands here is the documentation):

• AccCommandFlags_ActionsUi - command takes buddy names and will appear in Actions menus
• AccCommandFlags_BuddyUi - command takes buddy names and will appear in buddy context menus
• AccCommandFlags_GroupUi - command takes buddy group names and will appear in buddy group context menus
• AccCommandFlags_ImSessionUi -command takes IM session remote participant names and will appear in IM session menus (e.g., People menus)
• AccCommandFlags_PreferencesUi - command takes empty variant and will appear in Preferences/Setup UI
• AccCommandFlags_AboutUi - command takes empty variant and will appear in About box, plugin context menu or similar
• AccCommandFlags_PresenceUi - command takes empty variant and will appear in Presence UI

Now we also support flyout commands, via IAccCommand::put_Property(AccCommandProp_ParentId, …); For example here is the code from AIM MusicLink that could do the submenu support…

// Create Flyout Command Placeholder
CComPtr <IAccCommand> spiCommand;
piPluginInfo->AddCommand(kCommandId, &spiCommand);
CString menuCommand3;
menuCommand3.LoadString(IDS_ML_MENU_ITEM);
spiCommand->put_Property(AccCommandProp_Text, CComVariant(menuCommand3));
spiCommand->put_Property(AccCommandProp_Flags, CComVariant(AccCommandFlags_ActionsUi));

// add submenu by passing in the command ID of the above command

CComPtr <IAccCommand> spiSubCommand;
piPluginInfo->AddCommand(kShowLogCommandId, &spiSubCommand);
CString menuCommand;
menuCommand.LoadString(IDS_ML_SHOWLOG);
spiSubCommand->put_Property(AccCommandProp_Text, CComVariant(menuCommand));
spiSubCommand->put_Property(AccCommandProp_Flags, CComVariant(AccCommandFlags_ActionsUi));
spiSubCommand->put_Property(AccCommandProp_ParentId, CComVariant(kCommandId));

So as you can see we can easily manage the menus and keep them clean. I actually need to update a few of my plugins to take advantage of the flyout. As always keep the questions coming.

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.

This week at CES, Sony announced their Mylo2 Personal Communicator. Mylo was originally released last year and included some messaging, media and browsing capabilities. In the Mylo2, they have added AIM, Flash video support, and tighter audio/video integration. The thing I want to focus on, of course is the AIM client in the device. The Open AIM platform was used in building this client. This is the same library that is in AIM 6.5, AIM Lite, AIM Pro, etc. Its always neat seeing the platform implemented on technology other than PCs. For more information on the platform check out http://developer.aim.com. Here is a video and an image of the Mylo.

I have added a more samples to my code page. I have included an entire project to download as well. In the sample I added today, is the base plugin project I use when writing all new C++ plugins. Download the project, and all you have to do is add your business logic. I have documented the code to the hilt and given you some ideas on what you can do with the project. I will be adding some more base samples, for example a basic javascript plugin, or a basic C# bot. Check out the basic plugin sample here.

There are lots of posts all over the internet today about the availability of AIM now on GMail’s GTalk client.

• Justin’s Blog
  
• GMail Blog
  
• Mashable
• PC World
• New York Times

The integration was built on top of the Open AIM SDK Library. When you open up GMail you will be able to sign into your AIM Account by clicking on Settings|Chat. Your AIM buddies will appear on the contact list in most frequent order and you can hover over and get basic buddy info.