Posts Tagged ‘AOL’

Gmail Chat & AIM Are Now Interoperable

Published by pratyushkp on May 20th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via CrunchBase

AOL and Google have taken their instant messaging partnership to a whole new level with complete interoperability between AIM, Gmail and Google Talk.

Gmail users have been able to access their AIM account through Google Talk since 2007, but AIM accounts couldn’t message Google Talk accounts and vice versa. The juggling of two different IM accounts has limited the usefulness of AIM within Gmail. Google announced inblog post though that the two companies have made some interoperability changes to their chat clients.

The first big change is that AIM users can now send messages to their Google contacts and vice versa. This works no matter what client a person is using, so they can IM a friend that uses AIM via Google Talk, Gmail, iGoogle, Orkut or any other Gtalk client. Gmail users will now see a prompt asking them to add their AIM buddies directly to Gtalk. Users will have to add @aol.com to the end of the AIM contact they are trying to add to make it work (e.g. [email protected]).

Because users can add AIM contacts directly through Gmail, Google has removed the ability to sign in via AIM. This would normally be a problem for Google users that have hundreds of AIM contacts in their Gmail chat client, but AOL has created a tool to help them quickly add their AIM buddies to Gmail.

The changes may not affect users immediately, but they are big changes. AOL and Google have tens of millions of instant messenging users each. Combining their user bases makes both chat platforms far more useful, which could help them fend off their competition. They need to worry about Facebook, whose FbChat service has grown in popularity, and Skype, which has more than 500 million users and is now owned by Microsoft.

Source :- http://mashable.com

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Tags: , , , , , , Instant messaging,
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The Web Goes Green for Earth Day

Published by pratyushkp on April 23rd, 2011 - in Social, Technology

April 22, is the day when we celebrate our planet and its resources that should be preserved. In case you forgot, the web will remind you it’s Earth Day.

As always, many popular websites are raising awareness about this day; this year Google is celebrating with an animated, interactive Doodle on its homepage and Yahoo also sports a cute animated logo in a similar vein.

Ask.com, besides being dressed in an Earthy theme, offers the answers to some important questions about the environment.

Besides featuring a special logo, Aol’s front page story brings some of the most amazing photos of the Earth taken from space, and Microsoft Bing regularly features some beautiful photos taken from all around the globe, and today is no exception.

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Tags: , Bing (search engine), doodle, Earth, Earth Day, , Soil,
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Facebook Comments, Now On Over 50K Sites, Get More Social With Latest Upgrade

Published by pratyushkp on April 14th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Facebook Comments, which people either love or hate, have just been amped up by Facebook, to increase the ever elusive “user engagement,” which just means get more traffic. We’ve been using Facebook Comments for about a month, and I am personally thrilled at the improved quality of discussion, despite being bothered by annoyances like not being able to edit into comments.

According to Facebook, Facebook Comments are now on over 50,000 websites including us, NBC and Hotels.com. Sure Hotels.com is a start, Facebook’s got a long way to go if it wants to dominate the commenting space. While it made some needed adjustments today, there’s still more work that needs to be done.

Here are the new features added in today’s upgrade:

Permalinking

Users can now access each comment by its permalink, allowing users to share and a respond to specific comments more easily. Comment notifications in the Facebook newsfeed also direct back to specific comments, which is awesome because the alternative is pretty disorienting.

Comments API

Facebook is also providing an API so site owners can search and rank their comments, like highlight interesting and popular comments, reward top commenters or segment comments around a specific topic, like Apple or startups.

More social context in the newsfeed

Developers now also have the option of adding meta-tags to include more information about a story in commenters Facebook newsfeeds, including any images involved, title and description. Facebook holds that this optimization will increase click through because users will feel more drawn to specific stories.

Darker color scheme

Facebook is also offering a darker color scheme for darker websites, so developers with darker sites don’t have to have mismatched commenting systems. I’m actually pretty surprised no one thought of this sooner.

For trolls people clamoring for alternate ways to log in, Hotmail accounts have been added as a third-party login option along with Aol and Yahoo, but more interestingly there’s no mention of adding Gmail and Twitter which were slated to also be options pre-launch and then somehow mysteriously disappeared.

Great. So those without a Facebook account are good to login if they’re planning on doing so from 1998. See what I mean about “more work that still needs to be done”?

Source -: http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/facebook-comments-now-on-over-50k-sites-get-more-social-with-latest-upgrade/

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Tags: , , , , Hotmail, NBC, ,
1 Comment »

AOL Announces Revamped Mail Service

Published by pratyushkp on November 15th, 2010 - in Social, Technology

AOL is offering its users a new avatar of its mailing service code named Project Phoenix.

AOL was the first to introduce mailing service and yet as years passed, Yahoo mail and Gmail seemed to have overtaken it. With Facebook all set to enter the mail service game, AOL has announced a update for its mail service in a bid to compete with other mail services.

Codenamed Project Phoenix, AOL’s updated mail service promises to be fresh, faster and feature rich. Though in its beta phase, Project Phoenix will come equipped with new features like

  • Quick Bar, which allows users to quickly send emails, instant or text messages and even update Facebook and Twitter via Lifestream directly from the inbox.
  • Smart View, will allow users a small snapshot of important information like maps, attached photos and files, and conversation threads on the right hand side of the inbox so users can see relevant details and files before they even open a message.
  • Email aggregation will allow users to import their accounts from Yahoo Gmail and other e-mail services allowing them to use all their e-mail accounts from one source.
  • AOL will offer new email domain names for registering an email account, Users can choose from ygm.com (you’ve got mail), games.com, wow.com, and love.com besides the traditional aol.com.

For those who want to try the new AOL mail service they can go to phoenix.aol.com and request for an invite.

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Tags: , AOL MAIL, , , Lifestream, Mail Service, Project Phoenix, , Yahoo Mail
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