Ayttm (pronounced "item" or "A-Y-T-T-M") is a multi-protocol

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

. It is the heir of the EveryBuddy project.

Features

Services

Ayttm primarily supports one-to-one and group chatting on MSN,

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

, ICQ, AIM, XMPP and IRC. It also has support for sending rudimentary emails via

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typi ...

, which may be used to send

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

via email to

SMS gateway An SMS gateway or MMS gateway allows a computer (also known as a Server) to send or receive text messages in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) transmissions between local and/or international telecom ...

s. Ayttm also supports

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in Videotelephony, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

s on Yahoo! Messenger, and voice chatting over MSN using Ekiga (formerly GnomeMeeting). Service summary: *

OSCAR Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People and fictional and mythical characters * Oscar (given name), including lists of people and fictional characters named Oscar, Óscar or Oskar * Oscar (footballer, born 1954), Brazilian footballer ...

( AIM/ ICQ) *

IRC IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat ...

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (abbreviation XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an Open standard, open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Ext ...

(

via

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

) * MSNP (

Microsoft Messenger service Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger Service, .NET Messenger Service and Windows Live Messenger Service) was an instant messaging and presence system developed by Microsoft in 1999 for use with its MSN Messenger software. It was used by instant m ...

, commonly known as ''MSN'', ''.NET'', or ''Live'') * YMSG ( YIM with

support)

Fallback messaging

When contacts belonging to the same person - but in different protocols - are grouped together, Ayttm can automatically continue the conversation using another protocol, when the original protocol connection fails. It is known as fallback messaging to its developers.

Autotranslation

When a contact is tied to a particular language, messages can be automatically translated using Babelfish. As with most electronic translators, its accuracy can be dubious.

Aycryption

Aycryption is a filter that facilitates

encrypted In cryptography, encryption (more specifically, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plain ...

chat using GPG keys. All outgoing text is encrypted using the remote contact's

public key Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...

, and incoming encrypted text is decrypted using the local

private key Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...

Plugins

Ayttm's plugin architecture makes it possible for new protocol support to be added without modifying the core application. Plugins must be compiled against a version of the core and will only work with core versions that are binary-compatible with the core version that the plugin was built against. Five types of plugins are supported: * Service plugins - for protocol support. e.g.: MSN. * Filter plugins - to modify incoming and outgoing messages. e.g.: Auto translation, aycryption * Importers - to import contacts and accounts from other messengers. * Smileys -
smiley pack
* Utility - to add functionality. e.g.: Video capture, notes.

History

Towards the end of 2002, the everybuddy project started to stagnate and suffered from two major problems: Instability and a complicated set of preferences. The development team split into two to fix the problem. One group, led by Meredydd Luff started on a rewrite that was to be the long-term solution. This resulted in the eb-lite project. The other group led by Colin Leroy decided to fix all of the primary issues of everybuddy and work on features only after stabilising the core. The result was Ayttm. Ayttm first made it into savannah's CVS

repository Repository may refer to: Archives and online databases * Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content * Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...

on December 21, 2002, and almost daily developer releases were made: It was first announced on

Freshmeat Freecode, formerly Freshmeat, was a website owned by BIZX, Inc., hosting mainly open-source software for programmers and developers. Among other things, the site also hosted user reviews and discussions. While a majority of the software covered ...

on December 27, 2002. On March 31, 2003, citing availability issues with

Savannah A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

, the project was moved to

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

where it remains to date. Version 0.2.2 of Ayttm was released on April 1, 2003. The latest release of Ayttm is 0.6.3 and was made on July 10, 2010.

The name

"Yattm" was originally to be the name, but was misspelt by Colin Leroy when he registered the project on Savannah. The CVS log on Savannah shows that the executable name was changed from "yattm" to "ayttm" on January 16, 2003. No expansion for Ayttm was provided at this time. Several expansions of the name were attempted, and the one settled on was "Are You Talking To Me?". The question mark is part of the name. The name Ayttm is a

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

and credit for coining this term goes to Natasha Sharma.

Platforms

It runs on: *

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Several ports use the

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

graphical

widget toolkit A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library (computing), library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of ...

Copyright & Licence

The software is licensed under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

and is Copyright th
Ayttm team

References

General references * Frederick Noronha,
A Netizens 'item'
', The Tribune, May 19, 2003 * Frederick Noronha,
Indian helps make seamless instant messaging possible
', Express Computer, 2 June 2003 * Christopher Saunders,
IMPlanet's Linux IM Client Bonanza
', InstantMessagingPlanet.com, May 21, 2003 * R. Pratap,
Instant messaging with Linux
',

Deccan Herald ''Deccan Herald'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper published from the Indian state of Karnataka. It was founded by businessman K. N. Guruswamy and launched on 17 June 1948. It is published by The Printers Mysore, a privately hel ...

, March 11, 2004 * Marcel Gagné,
Instant Messaging Clients. A comparative review
', UnixReview.com, June 2003 * Edward Haletky, ''Deploying Linux on the desktop'', Elsevier, 2005, , p. 104

External links

* * {{IRC clients Free XMPP clients AIM (software) clients Free instant messaging clients Instant messaging clients for Linux MacOS instant messaging clients Windows instant messaging clients IRC clients Free IRC clients MacOS IRC clients Unix IRC clients Windows IRC clients Portable software Cross-platform software Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in C++ Instant messaging clients that use GTK Software using the GNU General Public License