The beta 6 of AOL Instant Messenger, a.k.a. “Triton” has been released today. You can download Triton here.
The big new thing (from my perspective) is that this is the first version of AIM in which Plaxo powers the address book. For those who don’t know, Plaxo, the company I work for, is a contact synchronization network that allows you to synchronize your contacts between your computers, between your programs (in this case AIM and Outlook/Outlook Express), between people (so that I can update my information on other people’s address book). Did I mention that all this is free?
I don’t have a program like SnagIt installed on my Windows box, I won’t have any tutorials for you. What I will say is if you have Windows and use AIM, this is a cool beta to play with. There is a feature buried into it that allows you to link up with people on AIM by their e-mail addresses. I was shocked to see how many of my old contacts have AIM. (The best part for me was that it synched up from the AIM beta to Plaxo and then down to my Mac OS X Address Book which I could then import into iChat.1)
1 Yeah, you can’t do this currently because there is no public Mac OS X Address Book client available. But if you use Thunderbird on the Mac, you can sync with that. Also, it’s nice to have an online-address book that really works and doesn’t cost $99.95/year.
In an unrelated note. Have you noticed that Apple loves to add features to dotMac in September? Do you think this has anything to do with the fact that the original iTools members renewals are due in October? One would think that internet growth rate should have smoothed that out by now. If not, why the heck aren’t they including a one year membership (or one year renewal) free with any Mac purchase? I’m sure they’d get a lot new members that way, given how often Apple fans buy Macs.