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AIM Has Been Resurrected. Kind Of. (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the mixed-feelings dept.

AOL discontinued AIM, its 20-year-old iconic instant messaging service, last December, months after cutting third-party access to it. Now Motherboard reports a a small team of developers has resurrected it with a private server. From the report: The new chat service is called AIM Phoenix, and it works by running the messages through a private Dynamic DNS run by Wildman Productions, a non-profit group of hobbyist programers. This isn't a new AIM client, it literally uses the old software running on a new server, so it looks and feels exactly like AIM. It's simple to set up. First, you download an old version of AIM from the AIM Phoenix website, register for a new username, tweak the settings to reroute through Wildman Productions' server, and then open yourself up the nostalgic glory of Web 2.0. The old versions of AIM are touchy on new machines and I had to play with a few different versions before I got 5.0 working on my Windows 10 machine.

7 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Why use the AIM client? by sleekware · · Score: 3, Insightful

    https://pidgin.im/ still updated and supported

    1. Re:Why use the AIM client? by ichthus · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://pidgin-encrypt.sourceforge.net/

      --
      sig: sauer
  2. Unanswered question by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    Why would anyone want to do this?

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Unanswered question by jythie · · Score: 2

      For the fun of doing it? Outside that, yeah, there is not much reason. I could kinda see it if it maintained the user's contact list so was just a drop in replacement to keep chatting with the same people, but if it can not do that I am not sure what purpose it serves.

    2. Re:Unanswered question by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 4, Funny

      The good old days on the internet:
      Where the men were men, the women were men and the children were FBI agents.

      --
      Time to offend someone
  3. AIM-54 Phoenix by jfdavis668 · · Score: 2

    When I saw the title, I thought it was referring to the AIM-54 Phoenix missile, used by the F-14 Fighter. With another Top Gun movie coming out, it was a possibility.

  4. Reinventing the Wheel by DatbeDank · · Score: 2

    What I find hilarious is how Slack came about. It's the best example of recreating the wheel I can imagine. There is no reason AOL couldn't have made AIM into what Slack is today.

    And yet corporations pony up tons of cash for the privilege of using it when there are a ton of chat programs around that use the same thing.

    I need to start thinking like a fashion designer. What's old is new and what is new is old.

    Maybe I should resurrect PDAs again, oh wait they already did that with Tablets.