Yet another Gmail post

Dang, Gmail is on a roll. This afternoon they just announced AIM integration:

Today we are happy to tell you about a new feature we’ve started to roll out which will enable you to sign into your AIM account and chat with your AIM buddies right inside Gmail. When you log in to AIM through Gmail chat, your AOL buddies will appear in your chat list with friends from your Google Talk network, and you will see the yellow “running man” logo to the right of your AIM friends’ screen names. To your AIM friends it will look like you are logged in to AIM as usual.

It’s been so long since I used a non-Gmail chat client that I don’t know if any of my friends actually use AIM anymore, but now I know that I could if I needed to. And that’s cool. :)

I never use AIM (or iChat, rather) to chat with people, I use it to text people’s mobile phones from my computer. And now I can do it inside Gmail? I may never close that tab again.

Ooh, interesting. Do tell how you work this magic.

Uh… let’s see. I think you have an AIM contact with their username as 18015551234. That’s 1AreaCodeRestofNumber.

And for whatever reason, the little plus sign ( ) that I typed before the 1 had disappeared. So, for the record, it’s PlusSignTheNumberOneAreaCodeRestofNumber.

Very cool — thanks!