This issue has been floating around for a couple of weeks now. It has not been addressed by AOL at all. Some users will receive “Unable to save your changes at this time.” error messages when trying to edit their AIM Profiles. This usually occurs when all profile information has been mysteriously deleted.

Workarounds & Fixes

No workarounds to this problem have been discovered yet. If you receive this error message, you can post comments below and we can try to troubleshoot it. If you discover a workaround, please comment below.

Unable to change Private Profile to Public

Also we’ve been receiving reports about users unable to switch between private and public profiles because the options are grayed out. Please keep in mind that until your screen name hits its sixteenth birthday, you will not be able to change it to a public profile.

Aim 6.8 was recently went GM a few days ago. Its new features have been covered here already, but as with newer versions, comes new complaints. Most of which deal with the plugins carousel at the bottom of the buddy list.

Aside from that, now that this version adds the ability to save and load buddy lists, it should make it more friendly for Aim 5.9 users who never switched over. The stock ticker might not be back as of yet, but instead it does come with a stocks plugin for current information only.

Aim For Windows Mobile

Oh yes! The mobile revolution has been finally been made. Its been years since we’ve been waiting for mobile applications made directly by AOL with no carrier tie-in. Thus Aim For Windows Mobile has been made for Windows Mobile 5 and Windows Mobile 6.

Aim for Windows Mobile uses your cellphone’s data connection, not SMS messages like Verizon and T-mobile uses. Please make sure you have an unlimited data plan or you may be incurring extra charges per MegaByte.

[via AOL BETA]

]]> http://bumped.org/tek/2008/05/28/myspace-makes-mail-searchable-with-google-gears/feed/ http://bumped.org/tek/2008/05/26/blocking-aim-crush-free-iphone-and-virus-links-in-aim-65/ http://bumped.org/tek/2008/05/26/blocking-aim-crush-free-iphone-and-virus-links-in-aim-65/#comments Mon, 26 May 2008 05:29:08 +0000 WBMike http://bumped.org/tek/?p=362

Recently, there has been a rise in AIM Spam links being sent out to everyone. Most of the messages go along the lines of:

Someone has an AIM CRUSH on you!
Click here - to find out who it is

I just got a free iPhone in the mail. Want to get your free iPhone? Go HERE and find out how!

I’ve got a bit of crush on you! But if you wanna find out who I am you gotta play along with my game! First, go here and you’ll find out more!

Although Spam messages are certainly not new. This recent influx has annoyed people to no end. You can essentially protect yourselves and other persons using AIM on your computer by trying out these methods.

If they have been annoying you, call up and complain to the “Mobile Messaging” company at 1-800-416-6129

Link Preview Plugin

Link Preview plugin is one of the first place winners in the Open Aim Top Coder Contest. Essentially Link Preview lets you preview an image of a website before you actually visit it. Now it certainly won’t protect you from viruses but you can use it to get an idea of where these spammy links are sending you to. More likely than not, if its an adult site you’ll be bombarded with popups as soon as you reach.

Gundoff: Malicious Link Question

Gundoff plugin essentially asks you if you really want to go to the link. Using bright red text and an ominous warning, the plugin will more likely prevent newer computer users from clicking on links. Still it won’t stop viruses, but at least you won’t get infected by accidentally clicking a link.

Blocking Them

The best way to not receive any SPAM from random screen names is to block everyone not on your buddy list.

• Click Edit
• Click Settings
• Click Privacy
• Click Allow only Users on my Buddy List
• Click Save

Now only people on your buddy list can IM you. We do know that certainly this is not the most effective way but this will do until someone out there creates a plugin that pre-screens all IMs and closes the conversation if it detects spam. Yes I know there is a plugin for this on Trillian but Aim 6 still needs one.

Aim Express 7 Beta has a brand new interface iPhone-like interface. Taking some hints from Meebo, Aim Express now is completely in Adobe Flash. So no more javascript error messages for you! Another big complaint is when AIM Express would pop over all your windows when you receive a new IM. That my friends is no longer an issue in Aim Express 7.

Whats New in Aim Express 7?

Absolutely nothing… Its pretty much as basic as you can get. You can IM, set yourself as away, and add or delete buddies, thats all there is to do.

iPhone-like Interface?

Taking a slice out of the iPhone’s pie, Aim Express 7 has the same slide out visual effect when you open a tab. All IMs now appear on the top as tabs. Each tab you press slides the whole screen to the left just like Safari on the iPhone. With this new interface, it makes you wonder how Aim 7.0 will be.

Aim 6.8 Beta 3

Aim 6.8 Beta 3’s main purpose is to integrate plugin developers with users. AOL has been boasting their API for quite some time. However, plugin developers had a tough time getting the much needed attention they deserved to get users to install their plugins.

With Aim 6.8 Beta 3, the integration is now much more visually apparent. A new ‘Get More’ button straight at the bottom of the buddy list will allow you to see the most downloaded, and most recently updated plugins. It also features a developer highlight which at this time doesn’t seem to be up yet. There is also a much needed slider button for the plugins. This feature seems to be working erratically in this build as I was unable to even slide it up or down.

[Developing Aim with Action Script]

• Highly anticipated!
• Great Visuals!
• Sega’s Last Chance!
• Product is Released!
• Low Review Scores!
• Angry Fans
• “True” Fans vs Angry Fans.
• Next year, a New Sonic Game Announced.
• Rinse Lather and Repeat.

Once it reaches the point where “True” Fans:

• Whom, quite frankly, can’t spell.
• Can’t ever see any flaws in any Sonic game.
• Thinks their ideas are the best.
• Hates IGN and Gamespot reviewers with a passion.
• Wants every character in the game because they are soo cool!
• Will have a temper tantrum on anyone who criticizes the game.
• Will bow down before God aka Ryan Drummond.
• Will write fanfiction with their own “original” character with supapowerzzz!!11
• Will post tl;dr topics about why everyone hates their favorite character.

Again once it reaches the point where “True” Fans argue with Angry Fans, the whole internet universe explodes with trolling, angry letters, petitions, you suck, we all suck, nobody cares, just a plain ol’ mess thats only cured once a new sonic game is announced.

So a new Sonic Game has been announced! Will Sega make a critically acclaimed game that will calm everyone down, or will it end up being a failure like Sonic 06. Only time will tell.

Australia

Africa

Europe

Now if only Simcity Societies could look like this..

But there’s one site I’d love to give a shout out to, and thats campsonic.com. You have organized all the information into one visually pleasing site and you win my Web 2.0 Honors! If only other Sonic Sites out there could follow in your footsteps. Unfortunately your comments section has been overrun by “True” Fans, but thats just the price to pay. Congrats!

Well it seems the Translate plugin has struck yet again. First it was “orbidden” and now every message you receive in AIM says translate. For Example:

Me: Hello
You: Translate
You: Translate

So again with the same steps as before you will need to disable or uninstall the Translator plugin.

How to Stop AIM from repeating the word “Translate” with every IM

• Click on Edit
• Click On Settings
• Click on Plugins
• Uncheck Translator
• Click Save

May Updates & Planning

• Write Articles for Stylinprofile.com
• Patapon Creature Project
• Aim Top Coder Editorial?
• Yet another Sonic Game
• A post outlining Sonic Fanbase
• More Aim, more Sims 3, more Cities Unlimited
• Grand Theft Auto 4 Radio Stations?
• Deleting Front Page Blog Until Further Notice

June Updates & Planning

• Stylinprofile.com Launches
• Stylin Profile launches Facebook & Myspace fan Pages

Since I have not been working so much here, I’ve been posting on PSU Blog which you should just check out how small RPG games have blogs too.

About every few days, someone experiences a few problems with installing Aim 4.7 for Mac. This isn’t entirely your fault but its time to put Aim 4.7 into perspective as to why this happens and what you can do about it. The Error message they receive is:

Unable to unarchive “aim.bin” into “…”

(Error 45 - Operation not supported.)

Aim 4.7: Why you should not install it?

Aim 4.7 is currently the last GM release for Macs. Aim 4.7 was released on February 18th, 2004. Now take a moment to think about what year it is today… Great! Now that we got that squared away. Lets now look at the problems most people have with AIm 4.7

• Aim 4.7 for Mac randomly signs off
• Aim 4.7 for Mac randomly quits while Away.

Aim 4.7: How to Install it?

Well if you still don’t want to heed my warning about installing it, and you receive the message that you are unable to unarchive “aim.bin” or AIM opens the Firefox browser when you run the installer, you can fix this problem by downloading Stuffit Expander.

You can download Stuffit Expander and fill out the information on that site so that you may install Aim 4.7 For Mac that was released in 2004.

What are other ways to install Aim for Mac?

Well I’m glad you made it this far. Fortunately for you there are several programs out there that you can obtain for FREE that were updated in 2008. Here are some of them:

• iChat: You can also Video Conference
• Adium: The Best Aim Program for Macs
• Aim.app: The newest Aim For Mac Program AOL is working on.

Electronic Arts has been known for its struggle on garnering trust to its gamers. Economically EA’s potential for profit is huge with their Sports line, Maxis, Boxing, Action, and Mobile gaming department. They continuously flaunt their in-game advertisements and its economic success.

Still this all takes a toll on a consumers by the recent drop in stock shares and quarterly earnings reports. The Sims 3 has many potential spots to solidify game play and do well with gamers. But we worry if EA’s marketing strategy will get the best of it.

A New Gaming Approach

The Sims 3 has an ambitious goal ahead of it. One of the major changes is that it now focuses on ONE household. Your person is placed into a world where everyone’s lives evolves with or without you. It sort of follows the lines of a MMORPG. Everyone existing in the game has their own schedule, love life, and personality. This doesn’t seem to worry fans too much since this concept was used during the Life Stories product line.

The Art Style

The most critical component for potential consumers at this stage is the graphics. The graphics look marginally better than they appeared in The Sims 2. A more realistic approach was expected, unfortunately the only areas so far that seems to be visually improved are the outdoors.

This screenshot depicts of a more detailed and realistic look of how a neighborhood is like. Now that the world is seamless, the gameplay allows you to leave your house and walk to another in real time. You will be able to move around the world with as much freedom as the console games. Hopefully as you move around, there should not be anymore loading splash screens that break up the action, but I do expect a loading screen before you enter another building.

Interior design still has that barren Sims 1-like look, every object is placed on a grid. The only new feature with object placement is diagonal rotation. This is not enough to make this game stand out from its predecessor.

This is the only screenshot so far has the most radiant lighting effect. The sun shines through the windows and the couch gives off its glossy glow, if only every screenshot presented this rise in quality…

User Feedback

Here are some various user comments from different message boards:

What I was most looking forward to in Sims 3 was a major overhaul in the department–a more realistic looking game–after all, it is a life simulation, but apparently that’s not going to happen. This looks like more of same to me, with incremental improvements.

Actually I looked at some of the graphics and they are dramatically improved hardware wise. The problem is that everything is unquestionably UGLY

Lindsay Pearson Interview Response:

However the screenshots give a somewhat distorted image, because when you see the Sims 3 live at work, you immediately notice the high detail in the world and its characters.

We shall see how this will turn out, there isn’t much uproar for this game as Simcity Societies. So far EA, your on a positive note here.

[Apr 13 08] We have received word that the Status Button has now been put back

Why were the Status and Unsend buttons Removed

The Status button and Unsend Button are now removed from the AOL Webmail. The AOL Mail blog reported that they had to remove these two features “because of the way these features were implemented, they were preventing us from achieving the best product performance”

Where can I find the Status and Unsend Buttons

They are still located in AOL Desktop and AOL 9.1
The status button has returned in Webmail.

This year’s theme is sending email back through time. Your only limited to 10 emails per user. Unfortunately they did not add this button on the compose mail page making this joke a mere failure.

Now if only the subject heading said “Happy Wedding Anniversary”

Aim 6.8 Beta 2, has launched with some reorganized features moved into different locations. Most notably, AOL Music, AIM Call Out, AOL Hot Searches, and AIM Mobile has been moved into a new My Plugins button. The My Plugins feature will allow developers and users to pick and choose what extra features they want with AIM. You are no longer tied to the four buttons at the bottom of the buddy list since now you can disable them and pick only the ones you like.

Two additional plugins were added called Notes and Stock Quotes. Notes allows you to write notes within your buddy list. Stock quotes just show Stocks within a small window. This is not a full featured Stock Ticker like many have been requesting but its a start.

Skinning Additions

If you’ve been skinning Aim, there has been some new functions added

    <linearGradientBrush id=”gradient.uiPluginPopup”>

        <rotateTransform center=”50% 50%” angle=”-90″/>

        <gradientStops>

            <gradientStop offset=”0%” color=”#FFFFFF”/>

            <gradientStop offset=”100%” color=”#EFFAFF”/>

        </gradientStops>

    </linearGradientBrush>

   <pen id=”pen.uiPluginPopup.border” color=”#000000″ WIDTH=”1″ /> 

gradient.uiPluginPopup, which was a pain to find, controls the box that shows up when you hover over “My Plugins”

pen.uiPluginPopup.border, controls the border around said box.

 

Look at how Things don’t work! :3

Time Warner has decided that AOL should be split into two. One part deals mainly with advertising aspects, and the other dealing with community.  

Goal: To keep the AOL + AIM community together as it once was.

The Obvious

AOL + Google

Well personally, I like this idea only because of how Google treats its members. They take a very minimalist approach resulting in less flashy ads and faster loading times. AOL members have been pleading for less ads, but their wishes were never granted.

However, even if we take away those crazy ads, AOL (paying) members do not like change. It pretty much boggles my mind of how they want things to stay the same like it did from 10 years ago. If you change one thing they go crazy and start complaining. As long as Google provide some sort of blog that can address community issues, things might work out  more smoothlyfor them.

Google’s approach may not fare so well with AIM. AIM’s business relies on teens, glitter, and glam. So we’d hope for Google be consistent with AIM’s visual design and services.

AOL + Microsoft

Microsoft may do well with AIM members but not so much with AOL members. Microsoft is big on advertising so I would expect to see pretty much no changes in any of the websites AOL owns. AOL (paying) members love guidance and tech support, and Microsoft stance on this has been pretty lapse. Microsoft does work very well with troubleshooting on message boards, so hopefully problems can get sorted out there.

This seems to be the most obvious choice to keep everything running the same way. In fact I prefer this over Microsoft + Yahoo. Google’s reaction towards this would be very interesting. Google and AOL have done some minor cooperative efforts this past year, hopefully they won’t totally cut themselves off from each other.

AOL + Yahoo

I can definitely see Yahoo converting AOL members over to its own platform, which pretty much kills everything. So I’m not entirely liking this prospect at all, unless it becomes Microsoft + AOL + Yahoo. I don’t think Yahoo is mature enough at this point in time to handle two conflicting communities concurrently. Maybe this could have worked years ago when Yahoo was all the rage and Google wasn’t even born yet.

2 Skins Now Available!

Introducing the new AimXP and AimXPblue skin.

Now you can relive the memories of Windows XP through Aim 6.8.

F.A.Q

Q. How Do you Unzip or Extract a File?

A. This page teaches you how to extact a file.

Q. What version of AIM should I be using and where can I get the right version?

A. This theme currently supports Aim 6.8, you can get this version at Beta.

Download Now!
Download is available Aim XP

Installation: OverWrite

WARNING: These Instructions will remove any custom skins. If you do not want to remove any custom skins please follow the instructions inside the readme file. Please note you should always back up your files incase anything goes wrong.

1. Extract (and select Yes to Replace) themes.box at:

C:\program files\aim6\services\imApp\ver6_8_2_19\theme

2. Extract (and select Yes to Replace) blgadgets.box at:

C:\program files\aim6\services\imApp\ver6_8_2_19\content\bl

3. Extract “aimxp” folder at:

C:\program files\aim6\services\imApp\ver6_8_2_19\theme