Tom's Blog

For our group project, the “Map Your (IM) Buddies” Mashup, I was responsible for exploring the possibilities of the AIM API. It was intended to extract the address details of one’s Buddies and then to map them onto GoogleMaps after logging in. I first started installing the AOL Instant Messenger 6 to see how and if address details can be stored in an AIM account. The first problem came up- nobody was keeping up profiles and some users didn’t even have a profile. Even users who were maintaining their city on their “AIM Page” (an AOL internal “myspace”) didn’t maintain it in the account. The second problem was, that the API itself didn’t seem to support the extraction of any account details except the online status of a buddy. That must explain why there are currently no meaningful (Web)AIM mashups existent. As Joern also experienced difficulties with the Yahoo API, we dumped the project and looked for possibilities. To be continued.

Here are some links to the AIM API and an example I could create following the documentation.

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