“groovy mother...”

That “open” AIM thing announced earlier? Looks to be more of a club to try and force clients like Gaim and Adium to include AOL advertising. Fuckers.

AOL have opened up the AIM protocol for reals, documenting the protocol and encouraging, rather than barely-tolerating, third-party AIM clients. I’d rather deal with XMPP, but this is an interesting step forward.

You can now log into your AIM or ICQ account using Jabber. They’re not yet doing server-to-server, but it’s surely just a matter of time.

New ammunition for next time I do a talk on how not to use PowerPoint.

New version of WinAmp (Remember them? It’s like an iPod, except you can’t carry it around with you. Ask your parents) includes “remote listening” — Stream music from your home PC to wherevers. Since Apple kept disabling hacks that did this with iTunes, I’m curious how AOL think they’re going to be able to keep this “legit”

Fucking hell, this is gutwrenching — The story of a woman’s affair told through search strings. Names are included too. “i took cyber sex to a physical level and it was a mistake”, “how can you tell if your spouse put spyware on your computer”, “pictures of marie osmond’s slutty daughters”, and more.

Your guide to some of the interesting folks you can meet inside the AOL search data leak. “1045042 is researching the relationship between Republicans and terrorism.”

Consumerist get their paws on the scripts & tools used by AOL to try to keep their users from cancelling. “If you stop and think about it, every Member that calls in to cancel their account is a hot lead. Most other sales jobs require you to create your own leads, but in the Retention Queue the leads come to you!” Wankers.