GM reSoFresh!

Corny I know but couldn’t help it. :D

We just released a new AIM Express that has some stuff that we think will make your day a little sunnier.

Import Buddies – We find that too often people have a hard time tracking down their buddies. Now, we’ve added a menu item that will help walk you through a process to help you find them!

Photo Uploader – Want to set a status with a photo? Maybe upload a picture of the beach with a comment saying “I love life”? Now you can! Click in the status field and you’ll see a gray box that you can click on to upload a status photo. Yup, that easy. :D

Status Sync – This was already in AIM Express but I figured I’d give it another shout. Chances are you have a Twitter or a Facebook account. If so, I encourage you to click on the Lifestream tab and set them up so you can set and receive comments directly from AIM! Once you’ve done that, the status field will have checkboxes that will let you decide where your status will be broadcasted, you know, just in case you don’t want something going to Facebook. J

Compact Buddy List – Known to the team as “Boss Mode”, compact mode strips out buddy icons, state icons, and compresses everything in the Buddy List so each buddy only uses 1 line. This helps you have that extra real estate so more buddies can fit into view. Oh, and it also helps in not making it so obvious to the Boss that you have AIM running. ;)

Please, as always, let us know what you think; after all, we’re making this for you. ;)

Cheers and Happy Thanksgiving!

~ Romy

I'm kind of a big deal.

Sorry. I had to start off my introduction with an Anchorman quote. If you haven’t seen it…get on it!

*Puts Corporate Cap On*

Hi, my name is Romy Macasieb and I’m the new Product Manager for AIM Express. I’m coming from the AIM Desktop team where I was a software developer focused on UI development.

*Takes Corporate Cap Off*

I’m absolutely stoked to be working on this product. I’ve worked side by side with AIM Express’ dev team and let me tell you, these guys can build what you want; you just need to tell us what that want is. Oh, and of course, they can build everything except for things they can’t build. Got it? Good.

But yea, on a serious note, we’re really interested in receiving your feedback, both good and bad. Have an idea? Please, shoot them our way. In fact, I encourage you to spam us regularly because we can’t promise quick turnaround times, but we can promise that we’ll stay in tune and take all ideas seriously. Don’t believe me? Try us out!

I’ll be posting on here regularly and trust me…there are some things coming down the pipe that you’re going to want to get your hands on. ;)

Many Thanks and Happy AIM’ing!

~ Romy

Rough Week

There was a server upgrade this week that was kinda bumpy. You may have seen some occasional trouble getting connected and staying connecting. The upgrade is now complete and the logs are showing that things are looking better.

Normally, server upgrades are seamless and you can't even tell they are happening. We're really sorry for the trouble this week, though. Let us know know you're still seeing problems.

Sign in as Invisible Not Working (Update)

So here's the deal: The server fix for this issue will go into place on 7/17. I know, that's kindof a long wait. Trust me, though, the server team has *a lot* on their plate. Management did consider an emergency fix but it would be risky and might cause more problems so we're going to take our time and make sure we do it right.

In the meantime, i've removed the "Sign On as Invisible" checkbox from the login screen. This will make sure that no one tries to sign on as invisible and then goes, "What! I'm visible? What the $?^#!". I'll put the UI back in place as soon as the server is working again.

You can still go invisible after you log in. If you have any questions, please just leave a comment. Thanks, all!

Shawn

Sign in as Invisible Not Working

We *just* discovered that there were some AIM server changes which are causing "Sign on as Invisible" to fail to actually make you invisible. You can still make yourself invisible after you sign in, though.

First, our apologies for not catching this before it went out.

Second, thanks to all those who reported the problem. We absolutely watch the user feedback.

I will post again as soon as i have an update on how quickly we can fix this.

Shawn

The Running Man is back!

So we know it's been awhile but we are proud to announce the upgraded version of AIM Express. Highlights of this version include:

Running Man branding: We have re-introduced the Running Man, so now your friendly yellow guy is back and here to stay!

Multi-party Chat (beta): All I have to say is...FINALLY! We know you have been missing the ability to invite multiple buddies to a chat room so we added this into the new version.

• Simply go to the Menu>Create Group Chat>Add your Buddies to chat group>Name it or add a Description>click Create Chat!

• If you are the Chat group host you can edit your settings (name, description, members) at any time! Just go to your options menu in your group conversation and select Edit Chat preferences...
  
  
• We also added the ability to see a roster or list of members in your chat group. You can hide this by going to the drop-down options menu on the group conversation.
  

We want to keep improving on the functionality of the chat feature so tell us what you would like to see!

Chat bubbles in conversation: We changed the message history layout to include chat bubbles which are a cleaner look. Let us know what you think!

....and now with Buddy Info!

So we took your advice and made a huge update from our last release to include the option to edit your Buddy Info directly from AIM Express! To access this just go to your menu button on the Buddy List screen and click on "My Buddy Info" to edit what you want to push out to the rest of your buddies.

Also, don't overlook one of our really cool features...Buddy Updates. If you click on the link below "Buddy Updates Settings" you can manage what feeds you want to broadcast to your network of friends or do so from the website here: http://buddyupdates.aim.com/. This is a great way to keep your buddies in the loop as you make updates from some of your favorite sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and more! Each time you make an update to a feed thats linked to your profile you buddies see an orange "i" appear in their Buddy List screen. You can view these updates by clicking on the "i" icon or go directly to their buddy info. Let us know what other feeds else you would like to see here too :)

-Ryan