RSS LJ

July 14, 2006

A free email → AIM gateway ()

by fluffy at 12:06 AM
So, there aren't any good free email to AIM gateways out there which allow you to simply send an email to an AIM account. OR ARE THERE?!

Well there's one now.

Main Usage

From your AIM account, send a message to Hikensha, who is a little bit odd but will be able to get you going, if you can figure out how to communicate. Then if you would like to send a message to your AIM account from email, send a message with your AIM username as the subject and the message text as the body. For example, this message:
From: me@example.com
To: hikensha@beesbuzz.biz
Subject: plaidfluff

doot doot doot

will send an IM with the text "doot doot doot" to my AIM account.

Outlook

This is particularly useful with this Outlook hack if you want to, say, send IM notifications to your Sidekick about a meeting reminder but you're not allowed to synchronize Outlook with the Sidekick for whatever reason (such as an IT department with a healthy sense of paranoia). Or if you just want to keep your work calendar separate from your home calendar. Or if you want to automatically send IMs to your computer or whatever.

The exact Outlook macro I use is this (only changed slightly from MS's example in order to format the message for Hikensha):

 Private Sub Application_Reminder(ByVal Item As Object)
   If Item.Sensitivity <> olConfidential Then
      If TypeOf Item Is AppointmentItem Then SendApptReminder Item
      If TypeOf Item Is MailItem Then SendMailReminder Item
      If TypeOf Item Is TaskItem Then SendTaskReminder Item
   End If
End Sub

Private Sub SendApptReminder(ByRef Item As AppointmentItem)
   SendPage Item.Subject & vbCrLf & FormatDateTime(Item.Start, vbShortTime) & _
      "-" & FormatDateTime(Item.End, vbShortTime) & vbCrLf & _
      Item.Location
End Sub

Private Sub SendMailReminder(ByRef Item As MailItem)
   SendPage "Mail: " & Item.Subject
End Sub

Private Sub SendTaskReminder(ByRef Item As TaskItem)
   SendPage "Task: " & Item.Subject & vbCrLf & Item.Body
End Sub

Private Sub SendPage(ByRef Body As String)
   Dim oEmail As Object
   Set oEmail = Application.CreateItem(olMailItem)
   oEmail.Subject = "plaidfluff"
   oEmail.Body = Body
   oEmail.Recipients.Add "hikensha@beesbuzz.biz"
   oEmail.Send
End Sub
(Obviously, change "plaidfluff" in SendPage to your own AIM address.)

So what this does is when, say, a meeting reminder comes up in Outlook, it sends the following message:

To: hikensha@beesbuzz.biz
From: [redacted]@[employer].com
Subject: plaidfluff

Broomball practice
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
PAC Lawn
Let's practice Broomball so we can get better.

which then appears on my phone as an IM. Then, I have a custom buddy message alert for hikensha so that it makes a sound and vibrates.

By the way, I highly recommend self-signing the macro so that you can safely run it without getting a prompt every time you start Outlook. The short of it is that you run Digital Certificate For VBA Projects (buried under 'Microsoft Office Tools'), generate a certificate, then in the macro editor go to |Tools >Digital Signature and then click on "Choose." The rest should be self-explanatory.

Notes

I don't run the server this runs on so don't hammer it too hard, please. If anyone abuses it I'll probably just take it down since I don't want to have to add rate throttling and so on (this is supposed to be for occasional instant notifications), so don't ruin it for everyone. I'll release the source later after I get a chance to clean it up.

The AIM side is a bot which runs on a slightly-modified version of PHPTocLib, and the email side is a procmail recipe which feeds a shell script which calls a Perl script (I'll probably consolidate both those parts into a single script but I like doing process control stuff better in sh than in Perl).

Hikensha's command prompt is inscrutable on purpose. Just remember that it's not having a conversation with you, it just has a strange way of saying "bad command or filename."

Also, it should go without saying but this is non-guaranteed. I only set this up for my own jollies and because I find it offensive that AOL would charge something like $30/month for this basic level of functionality.

Comments

#7725 07/14/2006 01:43 am
I used "love everyone", then sent an e-mail to hikensha@beesbuzz.biz, with my screen name as the subject and random text in the body, but I didn't seem to get an IM. Am I doing something wrong?

I mean, I don't know anything about that Outlook stuff, but as far as I can tell that's what I'm supposed to do. Am I dumb, or is it just not quite ready for prime time?
#7726 07/14/2006 01:54 am
You were doing it right, I just accidentally had the sending function still sending everything to my AIM account (waking me up I tell you what).

Try again. Smile
#7727 07/14/2006 08:44 am
You may want to take a look at AIM's developer program. The bot development program doesn't quite match what you're after, but some talking with the developers may make it so.
#7728 07/14/2006 09:35 am
I don't think it's necessary to register it as a bot just yet, unless people start really hammering it. Thanks for the link though; I could find AOL's wanktitude about what bots are but couldn't find the developer program.
#8527 02/15/2007 12:55 am
Oops, forgot to mention that I turned Hikensha off quite some time ago since it wasn't getting used. I only mention this because someone was just trying to use it. Sorry about that!
#9908 jessica (unregistered) 10/01/2007 12:45 am are there still no email-to-aim gateways?
I'm looking to find something that does this.. and I'm not finding anything! It seems hard to imagine that this does not exist! You seem like someone who can point me in the right direction Smile
#9909 10/01/2007 08:46 am
I don't know of email-to-AIM specifically, but lately a few "send a message to everyone" APIs have come to be, and many of them support AIM. Trumpia seems like it might work pretty well for that, for example.

Of course I think the setup I had was nice in terms of its simplicity and built-in authentication. Maybe I should just release the (very trivial) source to Hikensha with the hopes that someone else make it stable and usable?
#10805 Anonymous 04/28/2008 05:11 pm
fluffy:
Of course I think the setup I had was nice in terms of its simplicity and built-in authentication. Maybe I should just release the (very trivial) source to Hikensha with the hopes that someone else make it stable and usable?
That would be lovely. I know a few people who might be able to accomplish that.
#10807 04/28/2008 06:01 pm
Okay, here you go. Be warned that it's completely unsupported. And crap. It's been a long time since I've run it and I don't even know if it'll run in its current state.
#10930 05/29/2008 07:45 am hey
Did someone get this up and working, or know of another way to get email to aim? Any help greatly appreciated.
#10934 05/29/2008 10:46 pm
Well, have you tried, and if so, are you having any specific trouble with it?
#10935 05/30/2008 07:51 am
Fluffy,

i was under the impression that you had taken it down due to lack of use? Is this not the case? Thanks


fluffy:
Well, have you tried, and if so, are you having any specific trouble with it?
#10936 05/30/2008 07:58 pm
I took the bot down, then I posted the code so other people could try to run their own. I thought that's what you were asking about.