Imran Ali

AIM ET

AOL's Greenhouse technology incubator just released a basic edition of AIM entitled AIM ET. AIM's horrendous UI has always turned me off...and as good as Gaim is, I use it infrequently simply because it doesn't minimise to the System Tray. So until I switch to Macs and iChat, ET will be perfect.

ET is actually very un-AOL; simple, attractive, fun, usable, ad-free and most importantly - un-noying. The 1.6mb download gives you basic messaging, a cute UI and file transfer - nothing more. I wonder if this indicates a trend in stylish, no-frills MUJI-pplications? Windows Live Messenger could stand to lose a few pounds...

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OMG ET's WTF button?! It stands for What's This For? LOL ;)

O'Really?

I'm not big on AIM, with the bulk of my buddies on MSN Messenger, but curiously I noticed that my AIM buddy list is almost all current or former O'Reilly people! Lorrie Lejeune, Jon Orwant, Rael Dornfest, Nat Torkington and Surj Patel (incidentally, Lorrie, Jon and Surj are also current or former FT people too...)

I just got my invitation to this year's FooCamp yesterday, so I reilly must be a friend of O'Really.

(BTW, that's Gaim in the screenshot, I tried Triton last week, but like most AOL clients, it's a horrendously designed piece of software!)