Announcing AIMForwards.com! - Anytime/Anywhere Instant Message Forwarding Service
Well, the day has finally arrived. Clay, a fellow i300 board member, and I are announcing the availability of the Anytime/Anywhere Instant Message Forwarding Service! You can access it at:
The way it works is you give the system your AOL Nick information, give it your e-mail address and mobile phone #, specify a custom auto-response or away message, and activate the service. From then on the service will monitor the status of your AOL account. Whenever you log off from your computer or phone, the service will automatically log your account on and forward any Instant Messages you receive to your phone, e-mail or both. And when you log back on the service will automatically log off and monitor your account's status. That way you never have to go to some goofy WAP web page and re-login over and over. Just enable the AIMForwards.com service and never have to worry about it again!
But it doesn't stop there! You can actually RESPOND with an e-mail or short-mail message! That means that you can compose e-mails or short-mail messages off line, send them, and they will be forwarded as Instant Messages to your online buddies.
Simply reply to an inbound e-mail/IM or compose a new message addressed to "yourbuddy@im.aimforwards.com". AIMForwards.com will do the rest!
But wait, Johny, there's more! This service works with ANY mobile device! Pager, PDA, phone, blackberry, etc. If it's got a wireless connection then it will work with AIMForwards.com. We have pre-defined a bunch of wireless carriers and you can even define a custom carrier if needed.
Did I mention there's more? It is 100% free! No 3rd party ads, no subscription fee, no limitations...completely free.
So go ahead, check it out! Drop us a line and let us know what you think. But most importantly, get connected and STAY connected, anytime, anywhere!
In that respect it's no different from the Sprint AOL service or any other similar service.
It would be good to read the privacy statement on the site. Security and privacy are top priorities for us. We are using an industrial strength firewall and no one, not even Clay (my partner in this), can access the data. Please rest assured that every measure possible is taken to protect your privacy. We do not sell or distribute any of the personal information you submit to the service. No spam will be sent to you and no telemarketers will call you. This is just one of many professional sites that I run and it receives no less professional attention than any other system that I manage, despite the fact that it is completely free to the end user.
I was using 3 different screennames to avoid being bumped from my WAP AIM everytime I signed on to my PC or PQA AIM. I especially love the "away" message that is sent that lets my buddies know that I am not at my PC but that their message will be forwarded to my cell phone, that way they don't expect an instantaneous response from me.
THANKS GUYS for sharing your GENIOUS.
~kimberly
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This was so cool! For like an hour....the server's down now. ; (
I assume you guys know about it and are working to get it back up. I know these things happen, especially right after introducing the product. ; )
Looked really good though, I hope you guys can get it back up and keep it up. Out of curiousity, though, how vulnerable are you to having AOL block you out if they find out what you're doing and decide they don't like it? Are you accessing it in a similar way as MSN and others have tried, which could be shut down by AOL if they choose to do so, or are you a little safer?
I am currently on the site having no problems. If it was down it must have been just for a short while. My messaging forwarding is still up and running.
Kimberly
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Don't shake my tree if you don't like my peaches!!!
The site itself is back up for me now (it was down before), but it's not logging me onto AIM. I went in and tried toggling it on and off, but it still hasn't logged me in. (I have two screen names, one for my desktop and one for my phone, which means I can see from the desktop if the phone one is on.)
It was indeed having problems. Of all the random things to happen on opening day for a site, the power supply in a primary arp-relay system went down! I have just replaced the power supply and everything is back coming back online. The sudden disconnection may have caused some issues for the AIMForwards.com system so I'll be working on it to make sure it comes back up ok. Sorry for the inconvenience!
To answer your other question, I am not trying to hack into AOL's proprietary Instant Message protocol, which is what a lot of other 3rd party messenging clients do. I am using TOC, which is a stepped-down version of the AOL Instant Message protocol and AOL made it publicly available for the express purpose of third parties creating interfaces to their system. It's actually the same protocol that they use for their web interface. For AOL to disable or change how TOC works would be a major issue for them. Plus, TOC is GNU (meaning public source code, no use restrictions)
When you get right down to it, we are not trying to get around AOL's system or "hack" into it. We are merely using their publicly published protocols to provide an enhanced service at no cost and no profit.
Looks like it's back up, my alter ego came back on about 10 minutes ago.
Oh wait...ok, right as a typed this, I went offline again. ; ) Oh well, looks like Chris is working on it.
Cool, glad to hear we don't need to be worried about you getting locked out. I was aware of the TOC protocol, although I'm not very familiar with it. Out of curiousity, Chris, why can't MSN and others do the same thing? Are they "hacking" in using other methods besides TOC? If so, why?
Whoohoo, I'm back online! : ) Funny how things can change while you type. ; )
I noticed the word "Currently" on the FAQ page in regards to this costing money. "Currently, this is a free service." Did you just put that in to hedge your bets, or do you think that you will have to charge for it later? I know I'm asking for a forward looking statement that may potentially change and in no way should be considered binding, , but if you can give us an idea what your plans are, that'd be cool.
Gosh, you really are on top of things, watching it go up and down!
There was a complete fluke lock with a file related to the AIMForwards.com service so I had to run through things a couple of times to make sure it was ok. It should be stable from here on out barring any more unpredicted outages. They are digging trenches and installing fiber down the street so I'm crossing my fingers!
The difference between TOC and the full AIM protocol is that TOC does not have a lot of the bonus features like file transfers and anything beyond simple text messages. And TOC is no longer being updated and maintained beyond where it already is. But for our purposes TOC is perfect. All we want to do is send and receive text messages. Other 3rd party AOL Instant Messenger clients that use TOC are just as stable as AIMForwards.com is expected to be.
I built this system originally for myself, so rest assured, I am a user of this system and I don't like it to be down
The "currently" descriptor relating to the cost of the AIMForwards.com service is to allow for unforseen future events. I would like to see this stay cost and ad free indefinitely, but my personal resources will only go so far towards offsetting the cost of a growing user base. On the other hand, the bigger the user base, the easier it will be for me to generate revenue from 3rd parties to improve the system, keep the service running and keep it free for the end users.
At this point the statements I've made in this thread and on the site are true and we see no change in that status on the horizon. The service is free and ad free. If that status were to change we would give as much notice as possible to the system users.
I hope that answers your questions but feel free to get in touch with me or post on here if you have any additional questions or comments.
If you receive an instant message in your e-mail box, simply hit "reply", type your message and send it. AIMForwards.com will take care of the rest.
If you receive an instant message as a text message on your wireless device, you will need to reply using whatever method your carrier provides for sending text messages/emails from your phone. With some carriers you can simply reply to SMS messages, but with Sprint you will need to use Sprint's PCS Mail. There are plenty of other threads on how to use Sprint PCS Mail as well as documentation on the Sprint site.
There is an alternative to using Sprint's lame (in my opinion) PCS Mail. Personally, I recommend NOT using Sprint's PCS Mail because it's so hokey and convoluted. What I do is use MultiMail on my i300 and compose a message offline, then send when ready. I have it configured to use my regular e-mail account as my "from" address.
AIMForwards.com will allow you to send Instant Messages from two places: your regular e-mail address and your wireless e-mail address. You configure these addresses in your profile settings on AIMForwards.com. If you attempt to send it from anywhere else the message will be ignored. This is a security measure to keep people from sending messages on your behalf.
There is another trick for sending messages through AIMForwards.com. You can get any e-mail client (MultiMail, web based, whatever) and configure it's outbound SMTP server to be "smtp.aimforwards.com". AIMForwards.com will accept inbound Instant Messages in this manner, but it will NOT relay any other emails.
Where "AOL-NICK" is the nickname of the person you are trying to reach. You can use this format to initiate new conversations with people who have not yet sent you an Instant Message.
I really encourage you to utilize this email-to-IM feature of AIMForwards.com. It took some considerable effort to code and I'm excited when people find it useful. It's what really sets AIMForwards apart from anything else out there because you can compose and send Instant Messages while off-line and never have to log on and off your AOL account. Go ahead, experiment with it. I want you to!
This service is great so far ... but what I've been noticing later in the day (using Trillian) is that AIMForwards is bouncing me out of my standard AOL client. For example ....
[15:55] *** Someone else has logged onto your AIM account from another computer.
[15:55] *** See http://www.aim.aol.com/errors/USER_L...NEW_LOGIN.html for more details.
[19:00] *** Reconnecting to AIM as "toomer".
[19:00] *** Will attempt 10 connections with 60 second intervals.
[19:00] *** Connecting to AIM as "toomer", attempt #1.
[19:00] *** Buddy rights: 200 buddies allowed, 750 watchers allowed.
[19:00] *** BOS rights: 200 max on permit list, 200 max on deny list.
If you're using a system behind a proxy based firewall this situation can occur. Cable modems are often run behind a proxy firewall at the ISP. Many corporations use a proxy firewall as well. What happens is the firewall will time out your AOL connection if there is no activity for a period of time; this provides an opportunity for AIMForwards.com to log on. AIMForwards.com uses a "wait" time of 15 seconds to overcome this known situation because most clients will automatically reconnect within a few seconds if the connection is dropped by a firewall. That means AIMForwards.com will wait 15 seconds after it receives a notice of your account being signed off, then it will recheck your account status before attempting to log your account on. This time period has proven to be more then adequate for all of the proxy environments we have encountered thus far. In fact we had stable performance with much less wait time but we increased it to be safe. If you contact me privately I can work with you to identify what is happening in your specific case.
As a side note, I've found that sometimes people will report a similar observation of being forced offline by a remote logon, and it turns out that their second computer was turned on by someone else (a spouse, family member or co-worker) and their AOL client (trillian, AOL Instant Messenger, etc) automatically signs onto their account when the second computer boots up.
Please feel free to contact me directly about any specific user experience issues or potential bug reports. If it's a single-user oriented issue it's probably best to keep it off-board until we identify for certain where the issue is. We have done extensive testing with the system and this is not a beta phase, this is "live". The system has been running in various revisions for almost three months. While we understand that new issues and situations will be encountered as the user base expands, chances are good that most issues will be isolated situations.
if possible, to whomever may be using the service (thanks a bunch!), could you please post any issues that may seem relative to other users, in case a similar issue is encountered? Thanks!
Service is working well for me. I had some confusion with the activation codes, but once they were entered properly I was good to go. I don't monitor it minute-by-minute but I've checked a few times and the service appears to be working.
Seems to work and work well.
--Jesse
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For the past two days, my aim alter-buddy hasn't appeared online. Is there a server error? (because it shows that it is active, but doesn't log in automatically).
I apologize for the inconvenience. The user base grew much faster then we expected and our system simply did not have enough capacity. I am working on rectifying this situation right now. I will be making some major code changes and migrating everything to a new environment. I hope to complete everything by Sunday. I will make another post when that is completed.
Again, sorry for the inconvenience, thank you for sticking with us through these couple of days. Once this upgrade is completed we will be set to do dynamic service distribution in the event of future system capacity shortages.
Bulvot-
Thanks for the quick reply, and for attempting the reconfiguration! Good luck, and my hat's off to you for this newfangled system!
Nathan
Quote:
Originally posted by Bulvot Nathan-
I apologize for the inconvenience. The user base grew much faster then we expected and our system simply did not have enough capacity. I am working on rectifying this situation right now. I will be making some major code changes and migrating everything to a new environment. I hope to complete everything by Sunday. I will make another post when that is completed.
Again, sorry for the inconvenience, thank you for sticking with us through these couple of days. Once this upgrade is completed we will be set to do dynamic service distribution in the event of future system capacity shortages.
Announcing AIMForwards.com! - Anytime/Anywhere Instant Message Forwarding Service
, but if you can give us an idea what your plans are, that'd be cool. 
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