TinyBuddy IM: Instant Messaging for iPhone

Have an iPhone, but wish you could IM your buddies? Now you can, with TinyBuddy IM. It is an AIM® Enabled web-based IM tool. It works by using the Web AIM API, OpenAuth and Dojo.

The nice thing about this solution: you do not send your AIM password to me -- you are redirected to AOL's OpenAuth servers for authentication. My JavaScript only sees an auth token. Furthermore, my web page has to get your explicit consent before accessing your buddy list data and before sending the first IM or presence change.

So the price of this added security is pop-up windows. A new window will be popped so you can authenticate with the OpenAuth servers, and also when giving consent to the application to access your buddy list and IM. For the consent prompts, you can choose "Grant Always" to avoid them on subsequent logins. I think the pop-ups are worth the added security, and at least in iPhone's Safari, window popping looks neat. Unfortunately, the OpenAuth Sign In and Consent pages are made for larger windows, so you will have to double-tap zoom to read them.

More by James Burke at http://tagneto.blogspot.com