IMified is a IM application that I was turned on to by Steve Rubel. It was developed by Dave Hoff and Anthony Webb as a way to solve an immediate need, to get data in and out of 37Signal’s Basecamp.
- What was the inspiration for IMified? Why IM? Are you guys old school users of AIM bots?The inspiration for IMified came about from a real need we were having in managing projects in Basecamp. Adding information to our Basecamp projects was becoming a job in of itself. We longed for an easier way to to dump things like notes and todos into our accounts without having to launch another browser tab and navigate to a web page just to close it after adding. We use IM for communicating with colleagues and friends throughout the day. It’s always on and the interface is clean and simple. It was the obvious solution to our problem. Once we started to see the real value in using our IM client to post data to Basecamp, we decided to connect some of the other web apps we use a lot like Gcal and WordPress. We’re definitely not “old school” bot users, so the learning curve was a bit steep, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.
- What programming language to do you guys use for the site/system? What’s the hosting environment?Most of IMified runs on Coldfusion MX7 Enterprise on Windows Server 2003. We’ve recently setup an Openfire Jabber server for our Gtalk/Jabber users and have some custom Java for connecting to AIM and MSN. Coldfusion’s event gateway’s handle all the back and forth messaging between our app and the networks. We’re big Coldfusion fans if you haven’t noticed.
- What has been the biggest challenge in working with multiple IM protocols from multiple vendors? Which is the easiest? Which is the hardest?Well, there are definitely some challenges and its not so easy to launch and scale a high volume bot. The issues don’t really revolve around the technology for connecting, but the willingness of the networks to let you stay connected. Yahoo actually deleted our screen name without warning and made it clear they are not interested in letting “bots” live on their network. AOL, is much more accommodating, letting you turn your screen name into a bot, and ultimately offering a network agreement if that’s too limiting. Microsoft is still defining their “interactive agent” platform and we’re working with them to define a long term solution. Running a Jabber server also comes with its own challenges. To answer your question, our AIM bot has been the easist to keep running and AOL has been very helpful. Get with the program Yahoo!!We just this week launched our IM widget platform along with a super easy API. So, for those developers out there who would like to skip the above “nonsense”, IMified makes it really easy to build IM access into your existing applications.
- It sounds like IMified was created to fill a need you guys were having with interacting with Basecamp. What is your day job that required you to manage projects?Both Anthony and myself (Dave Hoff), run our own successful IT consulting businesses specializing in web application development.
- Besides IMified, what are your favorite web based productivity tools?We love JOTT, stikkit, GrandCentral, Remember the Milk, and Gmail. Still waiting for that killer app, but when it comes, we’ll definitely IMifiy it : )