Site Updates: While browsing my personal archives, I found an ooold article submitted by squirrel way back in 2002. This article, Using Your Own AOL Buddy Icon, sat in my "todo" folder, never getting the chance to see publication. Unfortunately the information isn't usable anymore, but for historical purposes I have put it up. This is also the introduction to the AOL Articles sub-section.

Yeah that's cool and all, but how about something practical that can be used now?

MBA has submitted a tutorial, Patching the iOS AIM Client. This is especially useful because NINA's service allows these these apps to be used again!

Last (but not least), yours truly has added a new "Secret", Free NINA AIM Access. This information is only useful to non-donators that signed up for the free NINA ICQ promotion...

A very brief history: The ICQ service was started by Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996. It was then bought by AOL in 1998. According to a 2001 release from Time Warner, ICQ had over 100 million registered users. AOL later sold the ICQ service in 2010 to Digital Sky Technologies. (Owners of VK which was known as Mail.ru at the time!)

tonyshowoff made an announcement on the NINA discord:

NINA and Escargot #announcements — June 26, 2024 at 8:59 AM (EST)

Uh-oh!

Looks like the ICQ is gone, oh shucks, oh well! Wait, it still lives on with NINA!

We want to celebrate this wonderful occasion of the end of the old ICQ and the beginning of the era of NINA ICQ.

Until June 29th (Edit: Extended to July 1st) if you register a UIN you will be able to sign on to our ICQ service
without donating, for free, and yes you keep access after the 29th (Edit: Extended to July 1st)!
                    
We support ICQ 2000 through 8, and while some features are still in development, you won't find anyone who supports as much as us.

You can learn more here: https://nina.chat/connect/icq/

Please still consider donating because we've had very few donations this month and are already behind on hosting.
We want to continue bringing you fun services with weekly updates.
We don't bombard you with ads or sell your information so we require donations to keep going and money is always very low.
                    
https://nina.chat/donate

I cropped the end of the post that was more indepth about donating. You can follow that link for all the details!

Now, I would like to take a moment and share some *exclusive* screenshots of the main interfaces for 2 of Mark Zuckerberg's AOL fader progs! Until now we weren't able to grab these screenshots without being signed onto AOL!

This Vader Fader about screen was the only screen we could see previously!

Aaaaand here it is, the Vader Fader main screen:

Sample fade from Vader Fader:

Last but not least, we have the main screen of Zuck Fader:

NINA doesn't currently support Keywords, so I couldn't do much with Zuck Fader yet! I feel that it's pretty safe to say these interfaces haven't been seen by anyone in about 20+ years!!

I'd also like to link an article and its follow up from patorjk.com:

Was Mark Zuckerberg an AOL add-on developer?
Steve Case Confirms Zuckerberg as Former AOL Hacker

Welp, that's all I have ready for the moment! Now that things are taking off, I have SO MUCH content I'd like to share... but so little free time right now! Weekends might see the most updates, but stay tuned for more!