This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Brian McCallister. Original Post: Aimity - Command Line AIM Client Feed Title: Waste of Time Feed URL: http://kasparov.skife.org/blog/index.rss Feed Description: A simple waste of time and weblog experiment Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Brian McCallister Latest Posts From Waste of Time

Just posted the intial release of Aimity, a command line AIM client. Aimity has two components -- a server which actually maintains the AIM connection and sends/receives messages, and a client that talks to the server to send messages.

The server is started via the aimity script. It will listen on localhost:9111 for the client messages. The client script is called ra and works like ra joe123 Hey joe, am trying out this new command line AIM client called aimity which will transmit the message to joe123.

The first time you run the server it will step through a setup. It is worth noting that your AIM password will be stored unencrypted in your home directory ( ~/.aimity ), but as AIM encryption is painfully weak and the algorithm and key is publicly available, you shouldn't care about it anyway.

Aimity requires Ruby. I use 1.8 but it should work fine under 1.6 as well. It uses a derivitive of Justin Bishop's raim library so is GPL'd at the moment. I will get around to reimpementing the TOC protocol eventually and re-release under a BSD'ish license, or just put it in the public domain as it is pretty trivial code.

Also, it is a very trivial client right now - it doesn't do nice things like show you your buddies or that nonsense. I really only made it so I could pull up a client conveniently over ssh if I need to ask someone something =) Also, at the moment, the aimity server needs to be started from its install directory. The ra client can be fired up from anywhere. Sorry for the inconvenience.