AIM 6.1 and AIM Lite 0.32 Launched

Thanks to Greg and being late with this post, I can simply point you to his blog posts to get more info about our AIM 6.1 and AIM Lite 0.32 releases. The team has worked really hard to get AIM 6.1 out the door. I am very proud of everyone for the contributions they offered. I would love to thank everyone by name but there are so many people who played a part, I am sure to omit some. But to the core team who really made it happen — you know who you are — Great job!!

AIM 6.1 started before the holiday and had a fairly short dev cycle. We managed to pack a lot into this release including:

• Full screen P2P video sessions
• Better mobile/SMS integration
• Windows Vista support
• Images in AIM Profiles
• much more including a little skinning hack as documented by Greg.

I hope you enjoy the client. As always, we like to get feedback both positive and negative.
Thanks also to Justin Cohen and friends for continuing the effort on LAIM. It’s a great little client.

Download AIM 6.1 here.

Download LAIM here.

Airplane efficiency

I’ve often wondered about this. Now I have my answer.

Airbus A380 more fuel-efficient than a Toyota Prius
The A380 arrived in the U.S. today. The plane can carry 81,890 gallons of fuel and flies 8000 nautical miles, i.e., it burns approximately 10 gallons of fuel per nautical mile or 9 gallons per statute mile. The plane can seat 850 people if configured as an all-economy ship, so the mpg per person is approximately 95 (assuming the plane is fully loaded, which most planes seem to be these days). The Prius gets around 45 mpg in real-world driving and, though it can seat 5, is typically occupied by one person.

[Philip Greenspun's Weblog]

Advice for Runners, Part 2

I forgot to mention a few things in my first post.  Since it has been one of the most read posts on my blog (really!), I thought I would follow up with more sage advice about running.

Advice #6: Achieve runner’s high. This is what it’s all about. Runner’s high is your reward for suffering through the pain.  Running is pain and more pain. It is the kind of pain that only goes away when you stop running and walk for a bit. Then it comes right back when you start running again. I’m not joking. If you can’t handle pain, don’t take up running.

Runner’s high is a real thing and it is great! It is a feeling of euphoria, peacefulness, and well being. It isn’t as intense as some illegal substitutes but it is free and healthy. I think it is the reason many people keep running for so long. To achieve this, you have to work yourself up to a 45 min or so run and get used to that level or a little more. Once you do, you can put yourself into maintenance mode (stop increasing) and start to really enjoy your runs.

Advice #7: Shoes. For me, 45-50 mins is about as long as I can go before my feet and legs start to hurt a lot. This isn’t from muscle soreness but from pounding the pavement for so long. But one thing that can help through all stages of running is proper shoes. If you don’t know what “over pronate” means, you shouldn’t buy shoes without help.  Y should go to a running store such as Footsteps in Reston and get help. They will look at your gait and recommend the right type of shoe. I am an over pronator which means the outside of my heel hits the pavement first. I need stability shoes. If run in the wrong shoes, you will have more pain and possibly injury as a result. You will pay retail prices at a specialty store but it is worth it for the service.

Advice #8:  Don’t push until you are dizzy and see black spots.  If you are a beginning runner, use a heart rate monitor.  I did mention this in my last post but it bears repeating.  I used to push until I felt dizzy and saw black spots in my eyes. I know for sure I had exceeded my limits. It’s best to get a heart rate monitor so you know when you are approaching a limit and what it feels like.

Advice for Runners

Spring is here and it seems like a bunch of people I know are taking up running to get in shape. I have been running for more than 30 years and know a few things that work for me. I have had to bite my tongue to keep from sounding like a know-it-all when talking to people who are new to running. So my advice is here and you can take it or leave it. Again, this is what works for me. It should work for you too.

Advice #1: Call it running not jogging. Even though my pace is more like jogging these days, I still say I run. Jogging sounds kind of wimpy.

Advice #2: get some gadgets. There are plenty of gadgets and things to spend money on. You don’t NEED any of them but there are a few that help — a lot. I use a heart rate monitor, an iPod, and the Nike+iPod running kit. The heart rate monitor is by far the most useful training device you can buy. It will help you know when you are over or under training. I set my treadmill to keep my heart rate at 145 beats per min and the treadmill adjusts the pace and incline to keep me there. 145 bpm is about 80% capacity for me. Any more than that and I start to breath hard. Less and it is too easy a workout. This let’s me increase my fitness level without much pain.

iPod. I said the heart rate monitor is the most useful device but an iPod may be more important. I listen to music and sometimes audio books when I run. If you get bored running, you will stop doing it.

Headphones are tricky for runners. The bounce out of your ears or cause your ears to sweat if you don’t get them set right. I use an over the head headphone, a Panasonic RP-HS35. If you know of a better set, please leave me a comment. The sound quality of these isn’t very good but they are a good combination of ear bud and over the head. Over the head is important. I put them on from behind so the cord is on my back instead of in front of me where I can catch it by accident. Then I put a sweat band over top of headphones to keep them in place. I never have to worry about them moving or bouncing around with this set up. I also use an arm band to carry an iPod Nano. Wrap the cord around the nano and tuck the excess in the arm band and I have a no fuss setup. It looks like this:

The Nike+iPod kit is my final gadget. I just started using this. It costs only $29 and is worth every penny. It is like a next gen pedometer that monitors and records your pace, time, and distance. It can tell you all of these with the press of a button. And best of all, it records and tracks all of this on the Nike web site. Here is the graph from my run today:

You can see where I run up a steep hill because my pace drops.

Advice #3: Go slow and run for time, not distance. You can see from the graph above that I ran three miles in 36 mins. That is not very fast but I am kind of ok with that. The biggest mistake most people make when they start running is they go too fast. You have to start out slow and pace yourself. You should start with maybe 20 mins of running. Run two or three times a week and increase your time (not distance) by 10% per week. You will be surprised how long you can go after only 8 weeks. Your pace will naturally increase as well. I have used this method over and over to increase my time, distance and speed.

Advice #4: If you are overweight, start by walking. Lose some weigh and build the muscles in your legs. Running is high impact on feet and knees.

Advice #5: Running uphill and downhill. There are slightly different techniques for running on hills. When you run uphill, put yourself in low gear. Take shorter steps and run from your butt. Trust me, it works. When you run downhill, keep your legs a bit straight and stiff. You want to feel like you are bouncing down the hill. You shouldn’t actually bounce but it will feel a little like that. It uses less energy this way.

Well, that’s all I know about running. Want to know about anything else?

Your data stream – it’s right under your nose

There has been some discussion in the blog world recently about your Data Stream | Life Stream | Traffic and Flow. The basic idea is a single stream of all the activity you create across the web. Emily Chang put it very well in her post My Data Stream:

“For now, this activity stream idea is providing the start to a holistic view of my activity across online networks: both my own and the ones I use. In turn, this acts as a conduit for you, the reader. Rather than just a static “recommended links” page or a blogroll, the data stream opens up my activity to you in semi-realtime and at one website.”

This is really the whole point of the AIM Buddy Feed. I’m happy to see the idea getting some traction independently. All the items you create, share, and say should be wrapped up in one easy to consume stream. And this stream really isn’t for you, it is about you and is consumed by people who are interested in you. It also gives people a way to interact with you by starting a conversation about something in your stream. The interaction is why you want to share these items in the first place, isn’t it?

With AIM Buddy Updates, you don’t have to use a feed reader or go to a web site to see my stream … but you can if you want to. Just watch for the indicator on your buddy list. I believe this is much more consumable by a mass market.

The challenge AIM and all the stream aggregators face is populating the stream. Most people don’t know what RSS and feeds are. Most people don’t understand how you can add feeds from all the services on the net you use to create a single data stream. How do you explain that? Good language may help. Support from sites such that host pictures, profiles, and blogs can help by adding the AIM Share and AIM Buddy Updates links or equivalents to their sites. I hope you saw my post here that explains these. But I’m worried that most people won’t understand it even though it is very useful.

BTW – you can go to the AIM Buddy Updates settings page to populate your AIM stream.

Use AIM to drive traffic to your site

Does 63,000,000 users sound like a lot to you? It does to me. Want readers to share a link with their friends? Have an RSS feed of user generated content? Put AOL Instant Messenger users to work for you. Please. Take advantage of our large huge user base. Read on to find out how.

AIM Share lets your users and viewers share pages from your site with their buddies. If you have an RSS feed of user content, you will want to know about our Buddy Feed feature (below).

When you use AIM Share to share a site, video, picture or anything, your buddies see it. On my buddy list, I will see an “info” icon next to your name when you share something. Go ahead and click one of the links above and see what happens (it is safe!).

Many sites now have buttons and links so their readers can share the site content with their social network like this one of from the WashingtonPost.com:

AIM Share isn’t a part of this one for some reason. It’s too bad because with AIM Share, there is a better chance your friends will actually see these shared items. You can easily put on your site. Each time the button is clicked, your articles and content are shared with more than 100 people (on average). Here’s how we do it…we show it on the buddy list.

Moments after you use AIM Share, your buddy will see an info icon next to your name on their buddy list. When they click this icon, they see the article that you shared. It’s pretty cool. Here’s an example:

For Web Sites With User Content…

AIM Share is great for sharing a single item. We’ve have something even better for your site. If your site has user generated content, you can place the AIM Buddy Updates button or link in your settings page so their entire feed of content, blog posts, pictures, and so on, is automatically shared with their AIM Buddies. All you need is a public RSS feed for the user generated content and AIM will find updates and share them. This is what the button or link would do:

http://buddyupdates.aim.com/addFeed?feedUrl=url_encoded_url_of_feed&feedTitle=Feed+Title

We handle the AIM authentication and everything. It couldn’t be easier for you.

Keep in mind that this feed should be content the user creates or owns such as their blog or pictures or videos. AIM associates the feed with the person so it needs to be created by them.

If you want to add your own blog, picture, or other feed, just go to the AIM Buddy Update Settings page and you can do that easily.

Can You Say 63,000,000 RSS Feeds?

Every AIM user has a personal RSS feed. Mine is http://buddyupdates.aim.com/alank/rss.xml. Yours is http://buddyupdates.aim.com/YOUR_SCREENNAME/rss.xml

Go ahead and click it to see for yourself. If you would like to see feeds for everyone on your buddy list, look at this.

AIM Buzz

I am happy to show off a nice little feature I have been playing with. It shows you all the shared items in your buddy network including AIM Share, Away Messages, AIM Profile updates, and all buddy updates for the last five days. It is all in one view and shows the most recent at the top. Items posted since you last looked are labeled “New” so you can easily see them. This is kind of like Kevin’s Buddy Stalker but is a simpler display.

I do believe we, the AIM team, should add this consolidated view of buddy updates somewhere in our products. I have found I discover a lot of good stuff happening in my network that I was missing by looking only at the AIM 6.0 buddy update indicator . I was also very surprised that there are almost 100 items for me to view. I visit this every few hours.

I built this as any good developer would…by copying lots of parts from other (better) developers. Every year or so I get the itch to do a little development project. I use these to learn some language or technology I hadn’t used and to build something I think I would use. My last project was, I think, last year when I wrote an AIM Plugin that lets you set your away message from your cell phone. This time, it was my first try at Javascript. I mixed in a bit of CSS and HTML to make for some goodness. I used the AIM Web API to fetch my buddy list and then pulled in the public RSS buddy feed for each person on my buddy list. It works but is slow because I have over 400 buddies. The good folks on the AIM Host team released an API that gives me all the buddy feed data for everyone on my buddy list in one call, getBuddylistFeed (see developer.aim.com). This call has been released but we are changing it and won’t have the changes installed for another few weeks. I don’t think the documentation for this call has been posted yet.

I also wrapped this up as an Apple Dashboard widget. I don’t plan to release that. While it was fairly easy to get the basics working, I could tell I would have to climb a mountain to get the widget working well and looking good. So I’ll put that off for now. I may wrap this up as an AIM plug-in if I have enough time.

I hope you give it a try. I have found it very useful and a bit addicting as well.

P.S. If you get an error or no results after 10 seconds, just reload. It isn’t perfect.