Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

I'm still working on the profile pages of the site. The idea is to only store the elements I need for the working of about2findout.com, and to link to other places on the web for all the rest.

So for example fields you can enter in your profile are country and birth date because later on I might program restrictions based on country or age. To give more information about yourself, you can then add a link to your blog or web site. In a next step I might add links to popular sites such as LinkedIn, MySpaces and the likes.

The same applies for communication. So far, you can add your IDs for MSN Messenger, Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, AOL IM and ICQ. For privacy reasons you can also select who can see this information: no one, everyone or just your contacts. Today I have been searching how to start chat sessions to these clients via a simple URL link on the page.

There is a site called onlinestatus.org that hosts free online status indicators for these messaging clients (except GTalk). But unless your messaging program can't be bothered with privacy, these links will always show 'unknown' because you need to open up your online status to the general public. So I decided not to go that far and just add HTML links to start up the clients. These links will only work if the particular messaging client is installed on your computer. I found the links for skype, aol, yahoo in the onlinestatus.org generated code. The one for MSN came from a Microsoft forum post. The one for GTalk I found on the customizetalk.com forum. And the one for ICQ came from their own panel launchers.

So to save other people the trouble of looking them up, here are the URL links to start up chat sessions (change USERID with the person you want to talk to).

case 1: //AOL
"aim:goim?screenname=USERID"
case 2: //Skype
"skype:USERID?chat"
case 3: //Google Talk
"gtalk:chat?jid=USERID"
case 4: //Yahoo Messenger
"ymsgr:sendIM?USERID";
case 5: //ICQ
"http://www.icq.com/whitepages/cmd.php?uin=USERID&action=message"
case 6: //MSN
"msnim:chat?contact=USERID"

Labels: AOL, asp.net, GTalk, ICQ, MSN, skype, Yahoo