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

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

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 valuabl ...

. It is the heir of the EveryBuddy project.

Features

Services

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

MSN MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. The Microsoft Net ...

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

, 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 ty ...

, which may be used to send

SMS Short Message/Messaging 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 devices exchange short text ...

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 telecommu ...

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, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral ...

s on

Yahoo! Messenger Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an advertisement-supported instant messaging client (computing), client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used wit ...

, and voice chatting over MSN using

Ekiga Ekiga (formerly called GnomeMeeting) is a VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME and Microsoft Windows. It is distributed as free software under the terms of the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later. It was the default VoIP client in Ubuntu until Octob ...

(formerly GnomeMeeting). Service summary: *

OSCAR Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to: People * Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms. * Oscar (Irish mythology) ...

( AIM/ ICQ) *

IRC Internet Relay Chat (IRC) 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 an ...

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

(

via

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

) * 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 me ...

, 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 is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...

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 al ...

, 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 Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technolog ...

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, is 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 i ...

on December 27, 2002. On March 31, 2003, citing availability issues with Savannah, the project was moved to

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

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 ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

* FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD * Microsoft Windows *

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

Several ports use the GTK+ graphical

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

Copyright & Licence

The software is licensed under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

and is Copyright th
Ayttm team

References

General references *

Frederick Noronha Frederick Noronha (born 23 December 1963) in São Paulo, Brazil is a journalist based in Saligão in the Bardez taluka of Goa. He is active in cyberspace and involved with e-ventures involving Goa, developmental concerns and free software. No ...

,
A Netizens 'item'
',

The Tribune ''The Tribune'' or ''Tribune'' is the name of various newspapers: United States Daily California *'' Oakland Tribune'' * ''The Tribune'' (San Luis Obispo) *''San Gabriel Valley Tribune'' Indiana *'' Kokomo Tribune'' *'' Peru Tribune'' * ''The Tri ...

, 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 K. N. Guruswamy, a liquor businessman from Ballari and was launched on 17 June 1948. It is published by The Print ...

, 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 Internet Relay Chat clients Free Internet Relay Chat clients MacOS Internet Relay Chat clients Unix Internet Relay Chat clients Windows Internet Relay Chat clients Portable software Cross-platform software Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in C++ Instant messaging clients that use GTK