AIM Pages, MySpace, Blogs, Feeds, Modules

I've been experimenting with AIM Pages. Having studied and participated in the MySpace.com social network quite a lot, I naturally began my study of AIM Pages using MySpace as a reference.

Two things immediately stood out for me:

• with AIM Pages you can embed software modules that provide advanced functionality into your page using a drag and drop Web user interface
• AIM Pages don't have a built-in blog feature

AIM Page modules

The first item is an outstanding capability that makes AIM Pages unique, as far as I know. It's certainly not something I've heard about elsewhere.

With MySpace, you can enter a certain amount of code into your profile, but there are significant limitations. Furthermore, you have to do all the coding yourself, or you have to cut and paste it from your friends' profiles or one of the many online "code markets" for MySpace scripts. Then, of course, you have all the problems of code spliced in from one site conflicting with other code.

AIM Page modules eliminate the need for the user to know anything about code. Instead, you simply select a module that offers the web capability you'd like to include on your page. Then, using the drag and drop AIM Page editor (go to aimcreate.com and select "Advanced Edit Mode"), you can select a module and position it exactly where you'd like it on your AIM page.

Hey! How did Joe get that blog feed on his page?

I was disappointed when I could not find a link that would let me post a blog entry on my AIM Page. Then I noticed that my buddy Joe has a feed for the AIM Pages Team Blog prominently featured right inside the "About Me" section of his AIM Page.

That looked like a great solution to the absence of a built in blog on AIM Pages. In fact, I quickly realized that a capability to put any blog feed into my AIM Page was actually quite superior to the MySpace solution. I'd be able to integrate any blog feed into my AIM Page, not just work with a blog rigidly tied to my AIM Page.

Modules to the rescue

I did a "View Page Source" on Joe's AIM Page profile in my web browser, and I found the code that appeared related to the blog feed listing. But this task surely seemed the kind of thing that would be perfect for embedding into a module.

So I went back to my AIM Page, selected "Edit Page," then selected "Advanced Edit Mode." At the top of the page, there's an "ADD modules" link, subtitled

"Drag and drop a module onto your page. It's that simple!"

So I clicked. The edit view of my profile page dropped down, and a module selection area opened up above. I scrolled down the "MODULE GALLERY" selector and found the "Rich Text & Feeds" category:

The "Feeds" module looked like what I wanted, so I picked it up by holding down my left mouse button, and moved it to the location on my AIM Page where I wanted to insert it:

At this point, I had some unconfigured code for a blog feed positioned on my AIM Page. To select the blog feed I wanted to insert into my page, I clicked the "Update" link on the module:

An edit form was displayed in the location where I inserted the feed module. I had options to select some predefined feeds, or enter one of my own. The feed I wanted to add was my devnetblogger's blog feed on dev.aol.com.

As soon as I clicked "Save" the feed I selected was automatically loaded into my edit page. Very nice! You get to see your module's output while you're still in edit mode, so you can alter or cancel your implementation of the module before it's actually presented on the web.

Since I liked what I saw, I clicked the Publish button at the top of my edit page, which is what you are advised to do "When you are ready to share your page with the world!"

Conclusions

If the lack of a built-in blog in AIM Pages bothers anyone, there is a very easy solution, a solution that actually provides much greater flexibility than any built-in blog application could provide. Since the "Feed" module reads RSS, you can in effect "attach" any blog to your AIM Page. It needn't even be your own blog.

AIM Page modules are a wonderful invention for social networking sites. I believe that if people knew about them, people who like customizing their social network pages would flock to AIM Pages. Drag and drop is so much easier than cutting and pasting code, then trying to deal with code conflicts among multiple style sheets and HTML snippets -- which is what you end up with if you try to seriously customize your MySpace page.

Many people believe the greatest reason that MySpace became the top social network site was the capability for users to customize their profile pages. MySpace leads the established pack here.

AIM Pages, if the word could be gotten out, provide superb opportunities for coders (and anyone who has studied MySpace knows it has spawned a plethora of cottage industry script snippet factories), while also making life much easier for non-techie people who want really cool pages. With AIM Pages, tomorrow's engineers can script modules, which then can be applied by regular AIM Page users using a simple drag and drop and possibly some data entries on a standard web page form. That's so so much easier than trying to splice in actual lines of script into the "About Me" section using the MySpace profile editor.

If this could catch on, you'd think it would be a real winner.

-- Kevin Farnham