It has been a while since we last released a Beta of AIM for Mac. Actually, it was almost two months ago. We have been working on our next Beta and it should be out in the next few weeks. We fixed a few bugs and made some enhancements that you will like.

Thanks to all of our loyal users who have provided their valuable feedback to us. We have been reading all of your comments, and while we cannot respond directly to everyone, we are working hard to address your issues and suggestions.

Please stay tuned for this next Beta release by checking in at AOL Beta regularly.

Larry Aasen
AOL Mac Team

If you live in the Washington, DC area, you know WTOP is the #1 news & traffic station and now, you can stay in touch with Presidential Inauguration news by listening to WTOP using AOL's SHOUTcast Radio for iPhone and iPod touch. The efficient stream will run over EDGE, 3G and WiFi (remember, AT&T iPhone customers can access FREE WiFi at any Starbucks and DC has a lot of Starbucks locations).

First, download SHOUTcast for iPhone or iPod touch.


Second, use the Search feature in SHOUTcast Radio [App Store] and look for WTOP. Click the Favorite star in the upper right hand corner to make it a Favorite.

That's it! Make sure you tune in often to find out about street closings and other important news.

Now, you're downtown DC and need to get in touch with your friends and family? Combining AIM for iPhone [App Store] with AIM Blast, you can register all your Buddies then you can send one IM to multiple people at the same time. Found a table for lunch, send a mesasge to your AIM Blast group.


Finally, you're sitting in a Starbucks with your MacBook and you couldn't see the swearing in ceremony at the Capitol, you can watch it live on AOL News Inauguration section.

Enjoy and stay safe!

Lee Givens
AOL Mac/iPhone Product Lead

We had a great Macworld Expo and WWDC in 2008 and we're all looking forward to Macworld Expo 2009. We will be in Booth 1438 (PDF) along with all the other winners of 2008 Apple Design Awards. Stop by and you can meet with the actual AOL employees behind our iPhone and Mac apps. AOL is also hosting a meeting room (Room 260) on the 2nd floor of Moscone, directly over the South Hall on the West Mezzanine. It's kind of tricky to find the right elevator, but stop by and check out AOL Desktop for Mac 1.5 or AIM for Mac 1.0 along with our new iPhone apps.

Also, AOL is sponsoring the Macworld Blast party this year. We'll be giving away tickets to the Blast where you can grab a drink and chat with the AOL Mac/iPhone Team. More information on the ticket giveaway will be posted in the near future.

If you're planning on visiting Macworld Expo this year, you can click here and get a FREE exhibit hall pass. There's a limited number of free passes, so it's first-come, first-served.


Hope to see you there!

thanks...
Lee Givens
AOL Mac Product Lead

March 6, 2008 will go down in Apple history as a seminal day for the iPhone platform and Mac users. I've been around the Mac platform for decades and I haven't seen this much excitement since the Newton or when Apple was testing Rhapsody, the code name for the upcoming Mac OS X (back in the late 1990's).

Happy new year from the AOL Mac Team!

We've been busy in the past few weeks preparing for CES and Macworld Expo 2008 (oh, and working on AOL Desktop for Mac :)

If you missed the free Exhibit Pass deadline last October, you now have a chance to get a FREE Exhibit-only Pass by visiting the this link:

http://rcsreg.com/macworld/08-G-PC474

The exhibits-only pass has a value of $45 and we have a limited supply, so sign up today! I will be blogging from the 2008 CES show in Las Vegas on any cool gadgets that may appeal to our Mac-centric audience. In the meantime, check out the Bill Gates keynote, his last one at CES.

Thanks!
Lee Givens
AOL Mac Product Lead

RSS is widely known as Really Simple Syndication, a fancy way to say that you can "subscribe" to a web site's feed (usually headlines or summaries from a blog, podcast, or news site). You can read more about RSS on Wikipedia (guess what? Wikipedia has an RSS feed you can subscribe to!).

For those of you who want to be kept up-to-date on what's going on the Mac@AOL blog, you can add subscribe to the feed by using the tools located on the bottom right of this page...

Clicking the orange + sign, you can add the Mac@AOL Blog summaries to your favorite web-based news readers. You can also choose to receive your feed by mail so you can read on your iPhone. Just enter your e-mail address in the "Feed by Mail" box.

The Mac@AOL Blog is a forum to allow the Mac product team to keep you posted on updates, new applications and some of the fascinating development work going on in other groups at AOL (check out BlueString or CircaVie). The blog can also allow interaction between the Mac community and the people at AOL who design and build the applications you use. We'll be reading your comments and responding, so please let us know what you're thinking.

Building great Mac applications requires a team effort so the entire Mac product team at AOL has been invited to write about interesting aspects of Mac development, designing user interfaces and any interesting topics about the Macintosh universe.

I know some of you may be saying to yourself, "AOL, back on the Mac?" Yes! AOL is committed to the Mac Platform and we have released updates to the popular applications: AOL Radio for Mac, AOL Pictures for Mac and AOL Service Assistant. Did you know you can use your Apple .Mac or free AIM account to log into AOL Radio or AOL Pictures? Both applications are Universal Binaries so they'll run nicely on your new Intel Macintosh.

Thanks!
Lee Givens, Jr.
AOL Mac Product Lead