As a company, AOL has made some horrible decisions. Slightly worse than its merger with Time Warner—one of the biggest disasters in American business history—was its decision to let its incredibly popular messaging client, AIM, wither and die. This is why that happened.
The patient database of the private health clinic that conducts STD tests for California's porn industry has been breached, exposing test results and personal details about thousands of current and former porn performers, some of which have been published on a Wikileaks-style website.
Why is a router maker buying Jabber, an open-source AIM clone? Disgruntled network admins (I'm still one in my heart) understand what Cisco's own press release doesn't spell out in English.Jabber isn't just another AIM wannabe. It uses XML trickery to connect to every popular instant message service — AIM, ICQ,…
Nobody reads terms of service agreements, those legal documents new users have to click a box to say they've read. And the truth is, they hardly matter to anybody but the cyber-rights-now crowd who get worked up by articles on Boing Boing, and the paranoid lawyers at large Web companies who want to avoid money-fishing…
Apple's new, faster 3G iPhones go on sale in the U.S. tomorrow, but a new store where Apple will sell third-party iPhone applications opened for business today. (Something to do with when the iPhone 3G went on sale in New Zealand. Those international date lines are so confusing!) The apps mostly range from free to…
AOL Instant Messenger—the chat network on which millions of cubicle workers flirt with each other and tip off gossip reporters about their bosses—is down.
We hear that Marcien Jenckes, general manager of AOL's instant-messaging products, was among those cut in today's mass layoffs. The Dulles, Va.-based executive was hired by an executive close to former CEO Jonathan Miller, so this may well have been a purge of the ancien regime, according to a former AOL executive.…
Facebook has an AIM screenname. It's not being used for much yet, just sending out invites to join the service from folks who upload their buddy list, but we see potential. Whether or not Facebook will take advantage is something very different. You can already poke and get messages via your cell phone with Facebook…
Each Monday, Intern Alexis uses a rigorous scale to rank the happy pair-bonds cemented in the Times wedding announcements. But surely, the Times can't contain all the nuptial bliss to be experienced in the metro area. Ergo, the Post's weddings section, where the couples require a more flexible scale that can take into…
