AIM® Presence

If you're looking for an AIM online/offline status indicator that quickly reflects your AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) availability then AIM Presence is your one stop shop and you'll get visual displays for more than just a status of "online" or "offline" which is pretty dang handy :)

Yahoo! Messenger is one that offers just "online" or "offline" as a status report but unlike Yahoo! Messenger Online Status Indicators where all you need is your Yahoo! ID, AIM requires it's users to obtain a "key"... strange but true :) Key registration is quick and easy, simply complete their AIM Presence Registration form, accept their License Agreement and you're redirected to a page containing your personalised HTML all ready to copy and paste onto your website.

Basically the HTML is as follows...
<a href="aim:GoIM?screenname=AIMSCREENNAME">
<img src="http://api.oscar.aol.com/SOA/key=AIMKEY/AIMSCREENAME" border="0"/></a>

All you need do is cut and paste your personalised HTML onto a webpage of your choice, mine is pasted below...

My AIM Presence

The cool thing about using the official AIM Presence is that you're not just limited so simply online or offline, AIM Presence reflects
- online
- away
- idle
- offline
- 1 way mobile
- 2 way mobile

I'm still a little perplexed about the whole key thing... it states that come January 2006 my newly obtained key will expire and I'll be sent an email about renewal... all simple in itself really... it's just that at the time of registering for my key it was already March 2006 ;)

Prior to the arrival of AIM Presence, the only other reliable status indicators for AIM were at OnlineStatus.org which is still alive and well so if the whole "key" idea doesn't appeal then swing by OnlineStatus.org and grab yourself not only AIM status indicators but also ones for Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, Jabber, ICQ etc.

AIM® Presence Links:
AIM Presence ~ http://www.aim.com/presence/main.adp
AIM Presence FAQ ~ http://www.aim.com/presence/faq.adp
Register for AIM Presence Key ~ http://keyreg.aim.com/register
AIM Presence License Agreement ~ http://keyreg.aim.com/license
AIM Presence Message Board ~ http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/boards.php?boardId=554480