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AOL Mail To Be Accessible Via IMAP
jfruhlinger writes "News.com.com is reporting that AOL's e-mail service, long accessible only via AOL's proprietary, monolithic app, will be available via IMAP starting Thursday. The story notes that this is part of a series of initiatives from AOL to move content beyond its walled garden and into standards-based formats such as HTML and IMAP that any Internet app can access. Supposedly a 'a dramatically different direction' for Netscape is in the works, too."
Mozilla Thunderbird. They've even recently added IMAP IDLE support! (It's in the nightlies.)
Accessing the AOL Mail System using
IMAP & Authenticated SMTP
An Unofficial Guide
Only email.
The "core" of AOL is the content that is inside of AOL. In that regard, AOL is not fundamentally different than it was 15 years ago (or so).
Now, allowing email via IMAP is pretty significant, but the community of AOL will still remain.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
But there IS something better than AOL's version
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is a tribute.
It still is. TOC is a stripped down version of OSCAR, which is what AOL's IM clients (and other licensed IM clients like IBM's Sametime) use.
And they still do. It costs (AFAIK) (for cable) about $5 more than RoadRunner. It's the same basic service, but without the RoadRunner brand and with a cheaper version of AOL's BYOI (Bring Your Own ISP) service (which costs about $7/mo, IIRC).
Trillian has all of the useful features of AIM, tons of useful features not available in AIM, support for skins and plugins, but none of the ads or spyware (WebTangent).
I have both AIM for Win32 and Trillian running right now. Currently memory usage:
AIM: 6060K
Trillian: 5456K
Which client is bloated?
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is a tribute.
It's not that AOL's IP stack is different, it is that AOL uses a different data link protocol than most dialup ISPs. Rather than opening a PPP session, when you connect to AOL, you establish a bastardized L2TP session with a machine referred to as a BERP. The BERPs essentially act as proxies for everything you attempt to access once you are connected. There are open source attempts to reverse engineer their protocols with pengAOL being the only one I can remember off the top of my head.
In regard to using proprietary protocols, it isn't that AOL has some master plan to lock customers into this proprietary infrastructure, it is just the way AOL has evolved. Imagine for a second, that you worked at an ISP with 22 million customers (up to 35 million at your peak). There is a point where the open protocols just don't fit your needs any more. AOL simply patched a solution together that has been working ever since.