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Axayacatl

Axayacatl ( ; Axayácatl ; meaning "face of water"; c. 1449–1481) was the sixth tlatoani of the altepetl of Tenochtitlan and Emperor of the Aztec Triple Alliance.

Early life and background
Axayacatl was a son of the princess Atotoztli II and her cousin, prince Tezozomoc. He was a grandson of the Emperors Moctezuma I and Itzcoatl. He was a descendant of the king Cuauhtototzin.

He was a successor of Moctezuma and his brothers were Emperors Tizoc and Ahuitzotl and his sister was the Queen Chalchiuhnenetzin. He was an uncle of the Emperor Cuauhtémoc and father of Emperors Moctezuma II and Cuitláhuac.

Rise to power
During his youth, his military prowess gained him the favor influential figures such as Nezahualcoyotl and Tlacaelel I, and thus, upon the death of Moctezuma I in 1469, he was chosen to ascend to the throne, much to the displeasure of his two older brothers, Tizoc and Ahuitzotl.

It is also important that the Great Sun Stone, also known as the Aztec Calendar, was carved under his leadership. An earthquake in Tenochtitlán occurred and destroyed many homes.

Military actions and death
Using as a pretext the insulting behavior of a few Tlatelolcan citizens, Axayacatl invaded his neighbor, killed its ruler, Moquihuix, and replaced him with a military governor. The Tlatelolcans lost any voice they had in forming Aztec policy. Axayacatl largely dedicated his twelve-year reign to consolidating his militaristic repute: he led successful campaigns against the neighboring altepetl of Tlatelolco in 1473 (see Battle of Tlatelolco) and the Matlatzinca of the Toluca Valley in 1474, but was finally defeated by the Tarascans of Michoacán in 1476. Despite some subsequent minor triumphs, Axayacatl's defeat at the hands of the Tarascans irreversibly marred his image, as it constituted the only major defeat suffered by the Aztecs up to that moment. In spite of his young age, he fell gravely ill in 1480, passing away a mere year later, in 1481, whereupon he was succeeded by his brother Tizoc.

Axayacatl the poet
Axayacatl wrote two poems. The first, Ycuic Axayayatzin (English: "Song of Axayacatl") is a defense against his brothers and critics; the second, Huehue cuicatl (English: "Song of the Ancients") is a lament written after his defeat in Michoacan.

In popular culture

 * The Obsidian and Blood series by Aliette de Bodard are set in the last year of the reign of Axayacatl and the first years of the reign of Tizoc, with their youngest brother Ahuitzotl appearing as a primary character.

title: Axayacatl


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Ahuitzotl

Ahuitzotl (āhuitzotl, ) was the eighth Aztec ruler, the Huey Tlatoani of the city of Tenochtitlan, son of princess Atotoztli II. His name literally means "Water Thorny" and was also applied to the otter. It is also theorized that more likely, the animal called ahuitzotl is actually the water opossum, the hand symbolizing its prehensile tail, which otters notably lack.

Either Ahuitzotl or his predecessor Tizoc was the first tlatoani of Tenochtitlan to assume the title Huey Tlatoani ("supreme tlatoani") to make their superiority over the other cities in the Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire) clear. Ahuitzotl was responsible for much of the expansion of the Mexica domain, and consolidated the empire's power after emulating his predecessor. He took power as Emperor in the year 7 Rabbit (1486), after the death of his predecessor and brother, Tizoc.

He had two sons, the kings Chimalpilli II and Cuauhtémoc, and one daughter.

Biography
Perhaps the greatest known military leader of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Ahuizotl began his reign by suppressing a Huastec rebellion, and then swiftly more than doubled the size of lands under Aztec dominance. He conquered the Mixtec, Zapotec, and other peoples from Pacific Coast of Mexico down to the western part of Guatemala. Ahuizotl also supervised a major rebuilding of Tenochtitlan on a grander scale including the expansion of the Great Pyramid or Templo Mayor in the year 8 Reed (1487).

He presided over the introduction of the great-tailed grackle into the Valley of Mexico, the earliest documented case of human-mediated bird introduction in the Western Hemisphere.

Ahuizotl died in the year 10 Rabbit (1502) and was succeeded by his nephew, Moctezuma II.

Ahuizotl took his name from the animal ahuizotl, which the Aztecs considered to be a legendary creature in its own right rather than a mere mythical representation of the king.

In January 2021 the INAH proposed moving the statues of Ahuizotl and Itzcóatl, known as the Indios Verdes, from the Parque del Mestizaje in Gustavo A. Madero, Mexico City to the Paseo de la Reforma. “The transfer means a reading of the urban space, recovering the historical discourse that gave rise to the formation of a set of monuments and roundabouts on Paseo de la Reforma, conceived at the end of the 19th century, with the idea of honoring the Reformation, a great transformation that it meant for Mexico, but to recover a historical reading that began precisely by underlining the Mexican splendor and the importance of the pre-Hispanic or Mesoamerican antecedents of our country”, Diego Prieto, director of INAH said.

In popular culture
Under the name Teomitl, Ahuitzotl is a primary character in the Obsidian and Blood series by Aliette de Bodard, which are set in the last year of the reign of Axayacatl and the first years of the reign of Tizoc.

In the historical fiction novel Aztec by Gary Jennings, Ahuitzotl is a prominent character. Set in the time just before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors, it accounts his construction of the many expansions of Tenochtitlan, and wars of conquest, trade, and proclivities.

General and cited references

 * Hassig, Ross (1988). Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
 * Townsend, Richard F. (2000). The Aztecs (revised ed.). New York: Thames and Hudson.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ahuitzotl


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Albinism in humans

Albinism is a congenital condition characterized in humans by the partial or complete absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. Albinism is associated with a number of vision defects, such as photophobia, nystagmus, and amblyopia. Lack of skin pigmentation makes for more susceptibility to sunburn and skin cancers. In rare cases such as Chédiak–Higashi syndrome, albinism may be associated with deficiencies in the transportation of melanin granules. This also affects essential granules present in immune cells, leading to increased susceptibility to infection.

Albinism results from inheritance of recessive gene alleles and is known to affect all vertebrates, including humans. It is due to absence or defect of tyrosinase, a copper-containing enzyme involved in the production of melanin. Unlike humans, other animals have multiple pigments and for these, albinism is considered to be a hereditary condition characterised by the absence of melanin in particular, in the eyes, skin, hair, scales, feathers or cuticle. While an organism with complete absence of melanin is called an albino, an organism with only a diminished amount of melanin is described as leucistic or albinoid. The term is from the Latin albus, "white".

Signs and symptoms
There are two principal types of albinism: oculocutaneous, affecting the eyes, skin and hair, and ocular affecting the eyes only.

There are different types of oculocutaneous albinism depending on which gene has undergone mutation. With some there is no pigment at all. The other end of the spectrum of albinism is "a form of albinism called rufous oculocutaneous albinism, which usually affects dark-skinned people".

According to the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, "With ocular albinism, the color of the iris of the eye may vary from blue to green or even brown, and sometimes darkens with age. However, when an optometrist or ophthalmologist examines the eye by shining a light from the side of the eye, the light shines back through the iris since very little pigment is present."

Because individuals with albinism have skin that entirely lacks the dark pigment melanin, which helps protect the skin from the sun's ultraviolet radiation, their skin can burn more easily from overexposure.

The human eye normally produces enough pigment to color the iris blue, green or brown and lend opacity to the eye. In photographs, those with albinism are more likely to demonstrate "red eye", due to the red of the retina being visible through the iris. Lack of pigment in the eyes also results in problems with vision, both related and unrelated to photosensitivity.

Those with albinism are generally as healthy as the rest of the population (but see related disorders below), with growth and development occurring as normal, and albinism by itself does not cause mortality, although the lack of pigment blocking ultraviolet radiation increases the risk of melanomas (skin cancers) and other problems.

Visual problems
Development of the optical system is highly dependent on the presence of melanin. For this reason, the reduction or absence of this pigment in people with albinism may lead to:
 * Misrouting of the retinogeniculate projections, resulting in abnormal decussation (crossing) of optic nerve fibres
 * Photophobia and decreased visual acuity due to light scattering within the eye (ocular straylight)
 * Reduced visual acuity due to foveal hypoplasia and possibly light-induced retinal damage.

Eye conditions common in albinism include:
 * Nystagmus, irregular rapid movement of the eyes back and forth, or in circular motion.
 * Amblyopia, decrease in acuity of one or both eyes due to poor transmission to the brain, often due to other conditions such as strabismus.
 * Optic nerve hypoplasia, underdevelopment of the optic nerve.

The improper development of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), which in normal eyes absorbs most of the reflected sunlight, further increases glare due to light scattering within the eye. The resulting sensitivity (photophobia) generally leads to discomfort in bright light, but this can be reduced by the use of sunglasses or brimmed hats.

Genetics
Oculocutaneous albinism is generally the result of the biological inheritance of genetically recessive alleles (genes) passed from both parents of an individual such as OCA1 and OCA2. A mutation in the human TRP-1 gene may result in the deregulation of melanocyte tyrosinase enzymes, a change that is hypothesized to promote brown versus black melanin synthesis, resulting in a third oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) genotype, "OCA3". Some rare forms are inherited from only one parent. There are other genetic mutations which are proven to be associated with albinism. All alterations, however, lead to changes in melanin production in the body. Some of these are associated with increased risk of skin cancer.

The chance of offspring with albinism resulting from the pairing of an organism with albinism and one without albinism is low. However, because organisms (including humans) can be carriers of genes for albinism without exhibiting any traits, albinistic offspring can be produced by two non-albinistic parents. Albinism usually occurs with equal frequency in both sexes. An exception to this is ocular albinism, which it is passed on to offspring through X-linked inheritance. Thus, ocular albinism occurs more frequently in males as they have a single X and Y chromosome, unlike females, whose genetics are characterized by two X chromosomes.

There are two different forms of albinism: a partial lack of the melanin is known as hypomelanism, or hypomelanosis, and the total absence of melanin is known as amelanism or amelanosis.

Enzyme
The enzyme defect responsible for OCA1-type albinism is tyrosine 3-monooxygenase (tyrosinase), which synthesizes melanin from the amino acid tyrosine.

Evolutionary theories
It is suggested that the early genus Homo (humans in the broader sense) started to evolve in East Africa around 3 million years ago. The dramatic phenotypic change from the ape-like Australopithecus to early Homo is hypothesized to have involved the extreme loss of body hair – except for areas most exposed to UV radiation, such as the head – to allow for more efficient thermoregulation in the early hunter-gatherers. The skin that would have been exposed upon general body hair loss in these early proto-humans would have most likely been non-pigmented, reflecting the pale skin underlying the hair of our chimpanzee relatives. A positive advantage would have been conferred to early hominids inhabiting the African continent that were capable of producing darker skin – those who first expressed the eumelanin-producing MC1R allele – which protected them from harmful epithelium-damaging ultraviolet rays. Over time, the advantage conferred to those with darker skin may have led to the prevalence of darker skin on the continent. The positive advantage, however, would have had to be strong enough so as to produce a significantly higher reproductive fitness in those who produced more melanin. The cause of a selective pressure strong enough to cause this shift is an area of much debate. Some hypotheses include the existence of significantly lower reproductive fitness in people with less melanin due to lethal skin cancer, lethal kidney disease due to excess vitamin D formation in the skin of people with less melanin, or simply natural selection due to mate preference and sexual selection.

When comparing the prevalence of albinism in Africa to its prevalence in other parts of the world, such as Europe and the United States, the potential evolutionary effects of skin cancer as a selective force due to its effect on these populations may not be insignificant. It would follow, then, that there would be stronger selective forces acting on albino individuals in Africa than on albinos in Europe and the US. In two separate studies in Nigeria, very few people with albinism appear to survive to old age. One study found that 89% of people diagnosed with albinism are between 0 and 30 years of age, while the other found that 77% of albinos were under the age of 20.

However, it has also been theorized that albinism may have been able to spread in some Native American communities, because albino males were culturally revered and assumed as having divine origins. The very high incidence of albinism among the Hopi tribe has been frequently attributed to the privileged status of albino males in Hopi society, who were not required to perform physical work outdoors, shielding them from the harmful effects of UV radiation. This privileged status of albino males in Hopi society allowed them to reproduce with large numbers of non-albino women, spreading the genes that are associated with albinism.

Diagnosis
Genetic testing can confirm albinism and what variety it is, but offers no medical benefits, except in the case of non-OCA disorders. Such disorders cause other medical problems in conjunction with albinism, and may be treatable. Genetic tests are currently available for parents who want to find out if they are carriers of ty-neg albinism. Diagnosis of albinism involves carefully examining a person's eyes, skin and hairs. Genealogical analysis can also help.

Albinism can also be a feature of several syndromes:

 * ABCD syndrome
 * Albinism-hearing loss syndrome
 * Deafness, congenital, with total albinism
 * Ermine phenotype
 * Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome 1 to 11 (excluding 9)
 * Microcephaly-albinism-digital anomalies syndrome
 * Ocular albinism with late-onset sensorineural deafness
 * Ocular albinism, type II
 * Oculocutaneous albinism types 1B, 3 to 7
 * Tyrosinase-negative oculocutaneous albinism
 * Tyrosinase-positive oculocutaneous albinism
 * Vici syndrome
 * Waardenburg syndrome type 2A

Management
Since there is no cure for albinism, it is managed through lifestyle adjustments. People with albinism need to take care not to get sunburnt and should have regular healthy skin checks by a dermatologist.

For the most part, treatment of the eye conditions consists of visual rehabilitation. Surgery is possible on the extra-ocular muscles to decrease strabismus. Nystagmus-damping surgery can also be performed, to reduce the "shaking" of the eyes back and forth. The effectiveness of all these procedures varies greatly and depends on individual circumstances.

Glasses (often with tinted lenses), low vision aids, large-print materials, and bright angled reading lights can help individuals with albinism. Some people with albinism do well using bifocals (with a strong reading lens), prescription reading glasses, hand-held devices such as magnifiers or monoculars or wearable devices like eSight and Brainport.

The condition may lead to abnormal development of the optic nerve and sunlight may damage the retina of the eye as the iris cannot filter out excess light due to a lack of pigmentation. Photophobia may be ameliorated by the use of sunglasses which filter out ultraviolet light. Some use bioptics, glasses which have small telescopes mounted on, in, or behind their regular lenses, so that they can look through either the regular lens or the telescope. Newer designs of bioptics use smaller light-weight lenses. Some US states allow the use of bioptic telescopes for driving motor vehicles. (See also NOAH bulletin "Low Vision Aids".)

There are a number of national support groups across the globe which come under the umbrella of the World Albinism Alliance.

Epidemiology
Albinism affects people of all ethnic backgrounds; its frequency worldwide is estimated to be approximately one in 17,000. Prevalence of the different forms of albinism varies considerably by population, and is highest overall in people of sub-Saharan African descent. Today, the prevalence of albinism in sub-Saharan Africa is around 1 in 5,000, while in Europe and the US it is around 1 in 20,000 of the European derived population. Rates as high as 1 in 1,000 have been reported for some populations in Zimbabwe and other parts of Southern Africa.

Certain ethnic groups and populations in isolated areas exhibit heightened susceptibility to albinism, presumably due to genetic factors. These include notably the Native American Kuna, Zuni and Hopi nations (respectively of Panama, New Mexico and Arizona); Japan, in which one particular form of albinism is unusually common (OCA 4); and Ukerewe Island, the population of which shows a very high incidence of albinism.

Special status of albinos in Native American culture
In some Native American and South Pacific cultures, people with albinism have been traditionally revered, because they were considered heavenly beings associated with the sky. Among various indigenous tribes in South America, albinos were able to live luxurious lives due to their divine status. This special status was applied mainly to male albinos. It has been theorized that the very high level of albinism among some Native American tribes can be attributed to sexual privileges given to male albinos, which allowed them to reproduce with large numbers of non-albino women in their tribes, leading to the spread of genes that are associated with albinism.

Persecution of people with albinism
Humans with albinism often face social and cultural challenges (even threats), as the condition is often a source of ridicule, discrimination, or even fear and violence. It is especially socially stigmatised in many African societies. A study conducted in Nigeria on albino children stated that "they experienced alienation, avoided social interactions and were less emotionally stable. Furthermore, affected individuals were less likely to complete schooling, find employment, and find partners". Many cultures around the world have developed beliefs regarding people with albinism.

In African countries such as Tanzania and Burundi, there has been an unprecedented rise in witchcraft-related killings of people with albinism in recent years, because their body parts are used in potions sold by witch doctors. Numerous authenticated incidents have occurred in Africa during the 21st century. For example, in Tanzania, in September 2009, three men were convicted of killing a 14-year-old albino boy and severing his legs in order to sell them for witchcraft purposes. Again in Tanzania and Burundi in 2010, the murder and dismemberment of a kidnapped albino child was reported from the courts, as part of a continuing problem. The US-based National Geographic Society estimated that in Tanzania a complete set of albino body parts is worth US$75,000.

Another harmful and false belief is that sex with an albinistic woman will cure a man of HIV. This has led, for example in Zimbabwe, to rapes (and subsequent HIV infection).

Albinism in popular culture
Famous people with albinism include historical figures such as Oxford don William Archibald Spooner; actor-comedian Victor Varnado; musicians such as Johnny and Edgar Winter, Salif Keita, Winston "Yellowman" Foster, Brother Ali, Sivuca, Hermeto Pascoal, Willie "Piano Red" Perryman, Kalash Criminel; actor-rapper Krondon, and fashion models Connie Chiu, Ryan "La Burnt" Byrne and Shaun Ross. Emperor Seinei of Japan is thought to have been an albino because he was said to have been born with white hair.

International Albinism Awareness Day
International Albinism Awareness Day was established after a motion was accepted on 18 December 2014 by the United Nations General Assembly, proclaiming that 13 June would be known as International Albinism Awareness Day as of 2015. This was followed by a mandate created by the United Nations Human Rights Council that appointed Ms. Ikponwosa Ero, who is from Nigeria, as the first Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism.

title: Albinism in humans


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Amr Diab

Amr Abdel Basset Abdel Azeez Diab (عمرو عبد الباسط عبد العزيز دياب, ; born 11 October 1961) is an Egyptian singer, composer and actor. He has established himself as a globally acclaimed recording artist and author. He is a Guinness World Record holder, the best selling Middle Eastern artist, a seven-times winner of World Music Awards and five-times winner of Platinum Records.

Early life
Diab was born as Amr Abdel Basset Abdel Azeez Diab on 11 October 1961 in Port Said to a middle-class Egyptian Muslim family from the countryside of Menia Elamh in Sharqia Governorate. Diab graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from the Cairo Academy of Arts in 1986.

Music career
Diab released his first album entitled  in 1983. Diab's second album, ' (1984), was the first of a series of records he released with Delta Sound; including ' (1986), ' (1987), and ' (1988). His later releases include ' (1989), ' (1990), ' (1991), ' (1992), ' (1993), ' (1994), and  (1995).

By 1992, he became the first Egyptian and Middle Eastern artist to start making high-tech music videos.

In 1996, Diab released his first album with Alam El Phan entitled , and he won the World Music Award for the first time, which proved an international success and gained Diab recognition beyond the Arabic-speaking world. Diab recorded four more albums with Alam El Phan, including  (1999). Diab also collaborated with Khaled (on the song "") and with Angela Dimitriou (on the song "Bahebak Aktar").

According to research by Michael Frishkopf, he has created a style in the song "", termed as "Mediterranean music", a blend of Western and Egyptian rhythms.

In the summer of 2004, Diab, having left Alam El Phan, released his first album with Rotana Records, , which he followed up with the hugely successful ' (2005), and ' (2007).

was released for sale on the internet on 27 June 2009; however, the album was leaked online and was downloaded illegally amid complaints of slow download speed on the official site. Diab's fans initiated a massive boycott of the sites with the illegal copies.

On 18 October 2009, Diab won four 2009 African Music Awards in the categories of best artist, album, vocalist and song for ""; Diab had been nominated by the Big Apple Music Awards.

In February 2011, Diab released his hit single ' ("Egypt spoke"), followed by the release of his album ' in September, produced by Rotana. In 2012, Diab hosted the first Google Hangout in the Middle East during his performance in Dubai. In October 2014, Diab released his album ', which topped his last album ' (2013) and again became the best-selling album in Egypt on iTunes andp eaked at No. 1 on the Billboard World Albums Charts, making him the first Egyptian and Middle Eastern performer to accomplish such a feat. In July 2015, Diab released a music video for his song "" from his album . In March 2016, he released , his first album since he left Rotana Music. The album was produced by the record label Nay For Media. His new album  was released in July 2017 with Nay Records.

In October 2018, he released a new album called . In 2019, he released a mini-album, ', and in February 2020, he released his 30th album, ', which included 16 songs. In the same year, Amr Diab released another album, Ya Ana Ya La, at the end of the year, December 31, 2020.

From April 2021 to July 2023, Amr Diab released a huge amount of singles, many of which topped the charts on digital listening platforms until his album release in 2023.

In February 2022, Anghami announced an exclusive partnership that will see the Diab's entire Nay Label audio and video catalogue and future releases available only on Anghami.

In December 2023, Amr Diab released an album called “Makanak” which contains 12 songs exclusively on Anghami.

Then released two singles called El Kelma El Helwa it was an Ad for Vodafone MUSIC (Egypt) and Hekyatna Helwa for Hyde Park both of them on the same March 11, 2024.

In April 2024, Rolling Stone picked Tamally Maak to top the Best Arabic Pop Songs of the 21st Century.

Musical style
Diab is known as the "father of Mediterranean music". David Cooper and Kevin Dawe refer to his music as "the new breed of Mediterranean music". According to author Michael Frishkopf, Diab has produced a new concept of Mediterranean music, especially with his international hit, "". Moreover, Diab is known as a composer, having composed more than 97 of his own songs.

Music videos
Diab is one of the first singers to popularize music videos in the whole MENA region and is the first Egyptian singer to appear in music videos.

Film career
Diab's fame in the music industry has led him to experiment with other forms of media, such as film. Diab played himself in his first film, , which was released in 1989. It also starred Madiha Kamel. His second film was Hussein El-Imam's production Ice Cream in Gleam (), in which Diab starred in 1992, was chosen as one of the best five Egyptian musical films by the University of California, Los Angeles (ULCA) School of Theater, Film and Television. The film was featured in the UCLA Film and Television Archive's new program "Music on the Nile: Fifty Years of Egyptian Musical Films" at James Bridges Theater at UCLA on 6, 8 and 10 April 1999. David Chute of the LA Weekly termed it "observant" and "a big leap". His third movie was released in 1993, and was named  (Laughter and Fun). The film premiered in the Egyptian Film Festival in 1993. Diab played alongside international Egyptian movie star Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago) and Yousra. Overall, Diab did not experience the same level of success in film that he had with his music career. Since 1993, Diab has focused on his singing career.

Amr Diab in movies
Diab's songs have been used in several films, including:
 * "" in Divine Intervention (2002)
 * "" in The Dancer Upstairs (2002)
 * "" and "" in O Clone (2001)
 * "" in Double Whammy (2001)
 * "" and "" in Coco (2009)
 * "" in The Dictator (2012)

Egyptian Revolution
During the 2011 uprising, some protesters criticized Diab for staying silent, and for fleeing Egypt for London. A few days after former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, Diab composed and sang a memorial song, "" (Egypt Said), and released it in conjunction with a music video showing pictures of the martyrs who died in the uprising. He initiated a charity campaign "" ("Truly Egyptian"). His online radio station Diab FM often presents talks and discussions about what the Diab FM team can offer to the community as well as applying it practically by being present in different sites across Egypt with a new humanitarian project each week.

Personal life
Diab has an elder daughter from his first marriage to Egyptian actress Shereen Reda. In 1994, he was married to Saudi businesswoman Zeina Ashour. They have three children. In 2018, he went on to marry Egyptian actress, Dina El Sherbiny, after his relationship with Ashour ended. It is unknown whether they were separated or divorced. However, Diab and El Sherbiny separated in late 2020.

Awards
He has been awarded the World Music Award for Best Selling Middle Eastern Artist four times: 1996 for album ', 2001 for album Akter Wahed, 2007 for album El Lillady and 2013 for ' album. He has also won (Best Egyptian Artist, Best Male Arab Artist and World's Best Arab Male Artist Voted Online) at the World Music Awards 2014. Amr Diab is the only Middle Eastern artist to have received 7 World Music Awards. Five of his albums reached the top 10 of Billboard's World Albums chart, with reaching No. 1 in 2014, the first for an Arabic performer. Alongside that accomplishment, two of his albums (2014's and 2016's ) both peaked at 29 and 14 respectively on Billboard's Heatseekers charts.

On 28 September 2016, Diab announced that he achieved a Guinness World Records title for "Most World Music Awards for Best Selling Middle Eastern Artist".

List of awards received by Amr Diab

 * Seven World Music Awards (1997/2001/2007/2014)
 * Six African Music Awards (2009/2010)
 * Two All Africa Music Awards (2016/2017)
 * Guinness World Record (2016)

Program "Al-helm"
A program produced by Amr Afifi, consisting of 12 parts aired on Rotana Music, Rotana Cinema and Egyptian Channel 1 station. The program detailed the biography of Diab and was scheduled to be launched simultaneously with the release of Amr Diab's new album, but the album's release was postponed to a later date.

title: Amr Diab


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Belgian hip hop

Belgian hip hop music has a few rappers stemming from Africa and Italy. Belgium, like France, controlled African countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Rwanda, and Burundi until the early 1960s. Like in France, immigrants from these countries started to study and live in Belgium.

The Belgian hip hop scene started in the late 1980s with a U.S.-based techno/hip hop group called Technotronic. In the group was an emcee named Ya Kid K from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who later led the group into international fame with hits like "Pump up the Jam" and "Shake That Body". In 1990, she also joined the group Hi-Tek 3 who were heard on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.

However, the first major pop rapper from Belgium was Benny B, who had a very mainstream and commercial sound. According to the European Music Office's report on Music in Europe, this was the first of many pop acts that helped inspire a backlash and the creation of an underground hip hop scene.

Also in the late 1980s in the Walloon south of the country, French speaking/rapping Starflam was the biggest name in hip hop. In the Flemish north Dutch speaking/rapping groups like 't Hof van Commerce, Krapoel In Axe, St Andries MC's, and ABN were popular, rapping in their regional dialects.

Today, the Belgian hip hop scene is growing. Rappers like Coely, Roméo Elvis and Damso are achieving commercial success in their country and abroad. Other contemporary rappers/formations are Stikstof, Woodie Smalls, L'Or Du Commun and Isha.

To find out more about today's Belgian hip hop scene, check out The Belgian Hip Hop Channel.

title: Belgian hip hop


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Dutch hip hop

Dutch hip hop or Nederhop ("Netherhop") is hip hop / rap music created by Dutch speaking musicians in the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium). Although the first Dutch rappers in Europe typically wrote in the English language, this began to change when Osdorp Posse gained a big following of fans. They were the first to record and release hip hop in the Dutch language, perform for big crowds and to achieve chart success with their albums.

In 1995, the same year Osdorp Posse had a top 20 chart hit with their album Afslag Osdorp, rapper Extince was the first Dutch rap artist to achieve a top 10 hit in the singles charts with Spraakwater.

After rapper Def Rhymz was the first to reach the Dutch main chart with number 1 hits such as Doekoe (Sranan Tongo for 'money'; 1999), and Schudden ("Shake (it)"/"Shaking"; 2001) with a more pop, R&B and dance influenced sound, Dutchlanguage hip hop has grown into a staple of mainstream pop music in the Netherlands and Flanders in the 21st century.

In 2021, Netherlands music streaming charts were dominated by Dutch rap music artists like Boef, Josylvio, Broederliefde, Lil' Kleine, Snelle, and Sevn Alias.

1980s
Between 1980 and 1985 a few Dutch Hip Hop records had already been released, but in 1986 Dutch rap duo MC Miker G & DJ Sven had a top 10 hit in at least ten countries across Europe with their Holiday Rap, which sampled Madonna's Holiday. It caused notable financial disputes, four years ahead of Vanilla Ice's similar sampling troubles with Ice Ice Baby. That same year Dutch rapper Extince released his first record Rap Around The Clock, and in 1987 he scored a modest hit with The Milkshake Rap.

However, in the late 1980s Nederhop ("Netherhop") emerged, as artists began to rap in Dutch, such as Def Rhymz, Blonnie B, Alex and the CityCrew, Dynamic Rockers, and the Osdorp Posse. Though there is disagreement about who were the first, the pioneers' work was at first only experimental, except for the Osdorp Posse, a group from Osdorp, a "hood" in Amsterdam, who were first to release tracks in Dutch, for instance the single Moordenaar ("Murderer") in 1989, marking a beginning milestone of Nederhop. After their frontman, rapper Def P, began by literally translating English raps into Dutch, he started writing original work that still contained peculiar idioms that resulted from his earlier literal rewordings. The result was described by rapper Ali B as highly visual and captivating. Once Extince switched to Dutch in 1994, having rapped in English since 1984, both he and Osdorp Posse became highly influential in Nederhop in the 1990s and beyond.

Notable in the late 1980s were All Star Fresh of King Bee topping charts with: "Back by Dope Demand" in early 1990 and Rudeboy of Urban Dance Squad who, at the time, were arguably more widely known in New York City than in the Netherlands. DJ and Producer All Star Fresh turned professional as early as 1979. After winning the Dutch Mixing Championships (DMC) in 1988, he was invited for the World Mix Championships in the London Royal Hall and won third place among strong competition. He was invited by Dave Funkenklein to enter the lion's den in New York. He made history in the Big Apple of hiphop by being the first non-American to fly into the finals of the World Supremacy Battle of DJs. He gained the highly respected second place of this prestigious DJ contest. The impression that he made that year, resulted in many invitations to perform with artists like Public Enemy, Stetsasonic, Ice T and Ultra Magnetic MCs.

All Star Fresh. As performer and producer he is better known as KING BEE. With his second floor filler Back By Dope Demand he achieved one of his biggest hiphop hits. In the Netherlands it resulted in a Top 3 position, and best Dance Product by The Edison Awards in the Netherlands. (The Edison Awards is an award by the Dutch Music Industry.) This also meant that with this title, he was the first black artist to win this award in the Netherlands. After that he appeared as supporting act for Madonnas show in the Netherlands. All Star Fresh kept entering the dance floors. The last titles mentioned were also popular worldwide, selling over 2.4 million copies. He didn't only work within projects like King Bee or Capella, but also was featuring well known production teams like Snap (I Got the Power). This teamwork resulted in the single Lets Get Busy (Clubland Quarts feat Snap introductin [sic] King Bee). This record ended up No. 1 in the Billboard Dance Charts (United States). Other productions in this line were Deepzone "It's Gonna Be All right", Kellee- my love, Ty Holden- you're my Inspiration and His Royal Freshness- They don't understand.

1990s
Urban Dance Squad was a Dutch rap rock band formed after a jam session at a festival in Utrecht in 1986, including rapper/vocalist Rudeboy Remington and DJ DNA (DoNotAsk). The band's music is described as a blend of genres, including hard rock, funk, soul, hip hop, reggae, jazz and ska and is compared with Living Colour, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone. They are still known for their hit single Deeper Shade of Soul, which charted at number 21 in the United States on Billboard Hot 100.

In 1989 Osdorp Posse formed, the first rap act solely in the Dutch language. They started out translating N.W.A songs to Dutch, but soon began writing their own rhymes. Dutch rap was still frowned up in general. Many hip hop listeners found it silly to hear raps in a different language than English and the radio and television didn't want to have anything to do with it at all.

Osdorp Posse overcame this, and gained a small crowd of followers. Indie label Djax Records from Eindhoven picked up on this and signed Osdorp Posse to their label. In 1992 they released their debut album Osdorp Stijl, making it the first ever Dutch language hip hop album. Their beats, created by producer Seda on Amiga 500 with Protracker, had a heavy sound and was similar to U.S. old-school hip hop, while also embracing an own style by making use of samples from metal music. The lyrics were often focussed on social criticism, with frontman Def P describing it as hardcore rap. In Deventer they found their first following, and the first Dutch language hip hop scene was born. The first hip hop groups after Osdorp Posse were Zuid-Oost Posse and Maasstraat Mannen.

Dutch rap kept on reaching a bigger crowd, though it still could be considered as an underground genre. A year after the debut album of Osdorp Posse, they released 2 more albums, Roffer Dan Ooit and Vlijmscherp. Paving the way like this, many Dutch rap acts popped up. In 1994 a breakthrough took place with the release of compilation record De Posse: Nederhop Groeit (meaning "Nederhop is growing"), presenting no less than 7 different new Dutch rap acts on one record. These groups performed all across the Netherlands, gaining even a bigger audience. By 1996, Djax Records released material by Ouderkerk Kaffers, White Wolf, West Klan, Dr. Doom, Spookrijders, Zuid Oost Posse, Klaas Vaak, Cut, Mach, Vuurwerk, Loco-Motief, Lijkenpikkers, Bitchez & Cream, Space Marines, Jesse, Neuk! and De Uitverkorenen.

The media still largely boycotted Dutch rap, while often expressing criticism on the harsh lyrics and lo-fi beats. Despite this, Osdorp Posse managed to build a large following of fans by 1995, resulting in nation-wide sold-out tours and big spots at Dutch festivals. They performed at the Lowlands Festival in 1995, with their popularity getting completely underestimated by the bookers, causing fans to even climb up lightning rigs and poles of the festival tent to be able to experience the set. In 1997 Osdorp Posse did two shows at the biggest festival of The Netherlands, the Pinkpop Festival. On the main day of the festival they performed at the main stage for a packed field of fans, resulting in the biggest Dutch rap show of the decade.

By that year the band had 2 albums which charted in the Dutch album charts, while still on an indie label and with virtually no airplay on radio and TV. In 1995 Afslag Osdorp, their fourth album, was the first Dutch language rap album to enter the Album Top 100, for a total of 14 weeks and even a ranking in the top 20. A unique achievement, with a peak position in the charts that would only be matched 7 years later by Brainpower.

By then, the band and Dutch rap in general got taken more seriously as well. After the undeniable success live on stage and in the album charts by Osdorp Posse, the lyrical content was getting cautious praise. By the mid-90's Def P collaborated with renowned and highly esteemed writers like Remco Campert and was often invited to recite his lyrics at poetry rap festivals like the Double Talk Festival at Paradiso.

At the same time a shift took place, when rapper Extince took rap in the Dutch language to a new commercial level and a different audience in 1995. While Osdorp Posse already had big chart successes with their albums, Extince's Spraakwater became the first single to make the mainstream pop single charts in the country. The song even made the top 10 of the singles charts and got airplay at the radio.

From then on there were two styles dominating the Dutch hip hop landscape. On one side the hardcore rap performers like Osdorp Posse, De Uitverkorenen, Casto and West Klan, who focussed on the content of their lyrics with social criticism, political subjects and knowledge, on often energetic and rough beats. With on the other side Extince, who was more of a storyteller with a slick flow and a knack for wordplay and metaphoric imagery, on funky and laidback beats.

A mix of these two styles gave birth to the Spookrijders, a three-man hip-hop group founded in 1996. With MCs Stefan and Clyde rapping about their personal lives and life in Amsterdam as a black man, the Spookrijders even gained respect from non-hip-hop musicians and fans. Most people admired the work of producer/DJ Cliff 'the Jazz' Nille after releasing Spookrijders debut album De Echte Shit ("The Real Shit"). In 1999, Spookrijders hit the charts twice with the hits "Klokkenluiders" and "Ik ben de man." Both these songs appeared on the second album, Klokkenluiders van Amsterdam. After some personal arguments among the three crewmembers, Spookrijders split up in 2003, after releasing a third and final album ''Hey... Spookies!!''

In 1999 The Postmen released their rap/reggae mix De Bom ("The Bom"), a top three hit-single. They were active across Europe from 1998 to 2003.

2000s
From 2000 onward, Dutch language hiphop grew considerably, both in number of artists, as well as in popularity, both underground and mainstream.

In the early 2000s the MC fronted band Relax got much airplay, mainly impressing with their albums. Since 2002, they released four albums, the first three of which made the Dutch album top 40.

Def Rhymz, Spookrijders & Brainpower helped develop the art. Def Rhymz & Brainpower dropped multiple hit records. Described by Ali B. as "..a white library boy with glasses..", Brainpower made Dutch rapping accessible to a much greater demographic. With six Top 100 albums, Brainpower is one of the most commercially successful Dutch MC's to date.

By 2000, about 15 years after their founding, Osdorp Posse still did sold-out tours and still had big album chart success. They even scored a surprise hit song, when Origineel Amsterdams hit the top 10 of the single charts. By then, Dutch rap fully took over from Dutch artists rapping in English, and Osdorp Posse set up their own label to release Dutch rap artists. The same year they released their seventh album Kernramp as the first double album in Dutch rap, with the second disc containing up and coming Dutch rap artists. In the months following its release alone, 17,000 physical copies were sold, unique for Dutch language rap at the time. Having let a permanent mark on their fanbase, when the album was re-released on vinyl in 2019, it became the best-selling album on vinyl the week of release.

From the late 1990s, a flourishing underground scene in provincial town Zwolle included rappers Blaxtar, Jawat!, and Kubus, and centered around the group Opgezwolle. Formed in 1998 by rappers Sticky Steez and Phreaco Rico, together with DJ Delic, the band Opgezwolle (punning their town's name into "Swollen"), was a group making raw hiphop. They released three successful albums, in 2001, 2003, and 2006. Eigen Wereld ("Own World"), from 2006, achieved the highest notation of any Dutch-language rap album until then in the Dutch Album Top 100, reaching top 4.

In the same year, rapper Typhoon, also from Zwolle, and inspired by aforementioned peer Blaxtar, released his philosophical debut album Tussen Licht en Lucht ("Between Light and Air"). The successes of the Zwolle rappers crop boosted other Dutch artists' confidence and inspired them to be proud of their origins – whether local, foreign, or mixed. Rapper Typhoon pointed out, that band names of trailblazers like 'Osdorp Posse' and 'Opgezwolle' refer to their origins (Amsterdam Osdorp and Zwolle) for an important reason, and tied this to the shift from rapping in English to Dutch, making it more relatable and resonant with the audience. Instead of hard and angry, some 2000s releases stood out fragile and sensitive, for instance the single Je moest waarschijnlijk gaan ("I Guess You Had to Go"; 2001) by Brainpower, mourned the loss of his best friend; and the raps of Typhoon are called some of the most poetic.

Opgezwolle split up in 2007, but members Rico & Sticks formed a new group: Fakkelbrigade, with Typhoon, Mick 2dope Murray, MC James and beatmaker A.R.T. In 2009, they released the critically acclaimed album Colucci Era.

From 2003 through 2006, Lange Frans & Baas B had four top-three hits in the Dutch Top 40, beside three more listings. Zinloos, a sad commentary on senseless violence ("Zinloos Geweld"), and their patriotic yet introspective Het Land van .. ("The Land of..") gave the duo two number-1 hits, in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

In the mid-2000s Cilvaringz, Ali B. and Raymzter were also commercially successful. Ali B featured on other artists' tracks, most significantly with Marco Borsato on the song "Wat zou je doen?" for the charity War Child. He first achieved solo success with "Ik ben je zat", featuring Brace, in 2003. Together with music artist Akon, and Ali's cousin Yes-R, Ali B made an internationally successful remix of Akon's track Ghetto, including additional Dutch lyrics. Yes-R had six Dutch Top 40 hits from 2006 to 2012, including his debut single. Ali B. has sofar had fourteen Top 40 hit singles since 2003, including several top three listings.

In 2005, De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig ("Kids These Days") were successful with Watskeburt?! ("Wuzhappenin?!"). Rapper Jawat won the "Grote Prijs van Nederland" 2006.

Another Dutch hip-hop duo are Pete Philly and Perquisite who are already well known in the Netherlands, Germany, and in Japan.

A famous Dutch rapper outside the Netherlands is Salah Edin. His album Nederlands Grootste Nachtmerrie (Biggest Nightmare of the Netherlands) won Best Album Award in 2007 and was fully produced by Dr. Dre's right-hand man Focus... He also shot three of the most expensive music videos in the history of Dutch Hip Hop, and through a management deal with Cilvaringz, performed in 34 countries worldwide.

2010s
Social acceptance of rap / hip hop in the Netherlands was perhaps epitomized, when artist Typhoon performed for the Dutch royal family twice – both in 2013 and in 2016.

In 2015, a self-titled "New Wave" generation of 'social media' (em)powered artists broke through with their eponymous New Wave album, as a temporary collaboration, including Bokoesam, D-Double, Jonna Fraser, Lil' Kleine, Ronnie Flex, and SFB.

Since 2014, rapper group Broederliefde released no less than seven albums, with the "worst one" topping at 13 in the charts — their debut album reached number 3, and their last five albums were consecutive top-2s, with three of them topping the chart. Their third album, Hard Work Pays Off (II) (2016), broke an all-time record by staying at number 1 for 14 weeks, beating a 2003 12-week record, held by Dutch A-list singer Frans Bauer. Nine of their singles also charted in the singles Top 40.

In 2016, album WOP! by Lil' Kleine was the first hip-hop album to reach number 1 on the Album Top 100. In the same year, Ali B's third album, Een klein beetje geluk ("ALittle Bit of Happiness"), proved his best yet, reaching number 7.

Starting 2016, rapper Sevn Alias released five consecutive top-10 albums, with his second reaching nr. 1, and the last three consistently reaching top-2 positions. He is highly productive, and is also enjoying extensive success with singles, collaborations, and other track releases.

Conflicts
The Dutch hip-hop scene also saw many conflicts between rappers, followed by diss tracks. The following were among the biggest Dutch feuds in hip-hop:

Osdorp Posse vs. Extince, BrainPower vs. Extince, T.H.C vs. Negativ, Kempi vs. Nino, Yukkie B vs. Negativ, T.H.C. vs. Lexxxus, Baas B vs. Kimo, Kempi vs. Mini, Kempi vs. Bloedserieus, Heist Rockah vs. Negativ, and Regga vs. Lexxxus.

The feud between T.H.C. and Lexxxus resulted in a fistfight on a hip-hop event, when T.H.C. frontman Rocks got into an argument with Lexxxus and then started the fistfight.

Gangsta
Dutch gangsta hip hop is currently a large scene together with underground hip-hop. Among the most notable acts and performers are THC, Heinek'n, Keizer, Kempi, Steen, Hef, Crooks, Adonis and Negativ. The rhythms are influenced by the American rap scene, and the lyrics are often about crime, drugs, money, women and other criminal things. Often coming from Dutch ghettos, lyrics often include themes occurring in these areas. Dutch gangsta hip hop mostly comes from the five largest cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Eindhoven.

Commercial success
The commercial success of Dutch hip hop is largely made by Brainpower, Yes-R, Ali B, Lange Frans & Baas B and Extince. For a large part of the Dutch hip hop community Yes-R, Ali B and Lange Frans & Baas B are sometimes considered fake because they do a lot of work for children TV stations. Brainpower and Extince however both enjoy a great respect for bringing up hip hop in their native Dutch. Other commercial rappers are De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig, and one of the more popular artists in the Netherlands, Partysquad or The Partysquad. They are a 2-man group, having had success with hits such as "Stuk" (Broken), and "Dat is Die Shit" (That's the shit), with other popular songs in the background such as "Non Stop" ft. Brainpower, "We Gaan Los" (we're going crazy {because of highness or drunkenness}) with Kempi, and "Wat Wil Je Doen" (What do you want to do?).

Dutch oldskool
The Dutch oldskool exists out of three primary artists, LTH, Osdorp Posse, Extince, Sugacane and Duvelduvel. Osdorp Posse make to what they themselves call hardcore rap and use beats that have much in common with N.W.A. Their lyrics are about racism, prostitution, police and other social subjects. Extince uses very different, more funky kind of beats than Osdorp Posse and uses a completely different rapstyle. Duvelduvel is known as a conceptual hip hop group.

Notable artists
Notable Dutch hip hop artists, listed by locality include: • Alphen aan den Rijn: Brainpower, Salah Edin

• Alkmaar: Boef, The Opposites

• Almere: Ali B, Josylvio, Raymzter

• Amsterdam: Sevn Alias, Brainpower, Osdorp Posse, De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig, The Opposites, D-Men, Lange Frans & Baas B, Appa, Yes-R, Tuindorp Hustler Click (THC), Lil' Kleine

• Capelle aan den IJssel: Ronnie Flex

• Deventer: Snelle

• Eindhoven: Fresku, Kempi

• Groningen: Kraantje Pappie

• Nijmegen: Gers Pardoel

• Oosterhout: Extince

• Rotterdam: E-Life, U-Niq, Winne, Feis, Hef, Postmen

• The Hague: Frenna

• Utrecht: Kyteman

• Tilburg: Cilvaringz

• Zoetermeer: Mr. Probz

• Zwolle: Opgezwolle, Typhoon

title: Dutch hip hop


text:
Anaïs Nin

Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell (, ; February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the daughter of the composer Joaquín Nin and the classically trained singer Rosa Culmell. Nin spent her early years in Spain and Cuba, about sixteen years in Paris (1924–1940), and the remaining half of her life in the United States, where she became an established author.

Nin wrote journals prolifically from age eleven until her death. Her journals, many of which were published during her lifetime, detail her private thoughts and personal relationships. Her journals also describe her marriages to Hugh Parker Guiler and Rupert Pole, in addition to her numerous affairs, including those with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and writer Henry Miller, both of whom profoundly influenced Nin and her writing.

In addition to her journals, Nin wrote several novels, critical studies, essays, short stories, and volumes of erotic literature. Much of her work, including the collections of erotica Delta of Venus and Little Birds, was published posthumously amid renewed critical interest in her life and work. Nin spent her later life in Los Angeles, California, where she died of cervical cancer in 1977. She was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976.

Early life
Anaïs Nin was born in Neuilly, France, to Joaquín Nin, a Cuban pianist and composer, and Rosa Culmell, a classically trained Cuban singer. Her father's grandfather had fled France during the French Revolution, going first to Saint-Domingue, then New Orleans, and finally to Cuba, where he helped build the country's first railway.

Nin was raised a Roman Catholic but left the church when she was 16 years old. She spent her childhood and early life in Europe. Her parents separated when she was two; her mother then moved Nin and her two brothers, Thorvald Nin and Joaquín Nin-Culmell, to Barcelona, and then to New York City, where she attended high school. Nin dropped out of high school in 1919 at age sixteen, and according to her diaries, Volume One, 1931–1934, later began working as an artist's model. After being in the United States for several years, Nin had forgotten how to speak Spanish, but retained her French and became fluent in English.On March 3, 1923, in Havana, Cuba, Nin married her first husband, American Hugh Parker Guiler (1898–1985), a banker and artist from Boston, later known as "Ian Hugo", when he became an experimental filmmaker in the late 1940s. The couple moved to Paris the following year, where Guiler pursued his banking career and Nin began to pursue her interest in writing; in her diaries she also mentions having trained as a flamenco dancer in Paris in the mid-to-late 1920s with Francisco Miralles Arnau. Her first published work was a critical 1932 evaluation of D. H. Lawrence called D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study, which she wrote in sixteen days.

Nin became interested in psychoanalysis and studied extensively, first with René Allendy in 1932 and then with Otto Rank. Both men eventually became her lovers, as she recounts in her Journal. On her second visit to Rank, Nin reflects on her desire to be reborn as a woman and artist. Rank, she observes, helped her move between what she could verbalize in her journals and what remained unarticulated. She discovered the quality and depth of her feelings in the wordless transitions between what she could and could not say. "As he talked, I thought of my difficulties with writing, my struggles to articulate feelings not easily expressed. Of my struggles to find a language for intuition, feeling, instincts which are, in themselves, elusive, subtle, and wordless."

In late summer 1939, when residents from overseas were urged to leave France due to the approaching war, Nin left Paris and returned to New York City with her husband (Guiler was, according to his own wishes, edited out of the diaries published during Nin's lifetime; his role in her life is therefore difficult to evaluate). During the war, Nin sent her books to Frances Steloff of the Gotham Book Mart in New York for safekeeping.

In New York, Nin rejoined Otto Rank, who had previously moved there, and moved into his apartment. She actually began to act as a psychoanalyst herself, seeing patients in the room next to Rank's. She quit after several months, however, stating: "I found that I wasn't good because I wasn't objective. I was haunted by my patients. I wanted to intercede." It was in New York that she met the Japanese-American modernist photographer Soichi Sunami, who went on to photograph her for many of her books.

Journals
Nin's most studied works are her diaries or journals, which she began writing in her adolescence. The published journals, which span six decades, provide insight into her personal life and relationships. Nin was acquainted, often intimately, with a number of prominent authors, artists, psychoanalysts, and other figures, and wrote of them often, especially Otto Rank. Moreover, as a female author describing a primarily masculine group of celebrities, Nin's journals have acquired importance as a counterbalancing perspective. She initially wrote in French and did not begin to write in English until she was seventeen. Nin felt that French was the language of her heart, Spanish was the language of her ancestors, and English was the language of her intellect. The writing in her diaries is explicitly trilingual; she uses whichever language best expresses her thought.

In the second volume of her unexpurgated journal, Incest, she wrote about her father candidly and graphically (207–15), detailing her incestuous adult sexual relationship with him.

Previously unpublished works were released in A Café in Space, the Anaïs Nin Literary Journal, which includes "Anaïs Nin and Joaquín Nin y Castellanos: Prelude to a Symphony – Letters between a father and daughter".

So far sixteen volumes of her journals have been published. All but the last five of her adult journals are in expurgated form.

Erotic writings
Nin is hailed by many critics as one of the finest writers of female erotica. She was one of the first women known to explore fully the realm of erotic writing, and certainly the first prominent woman in the modern West known to write erotica. Before her, erotica acknowledged to be written by women was rare, with a few notable exceptions, such as the work of Kate Chopin. Nin often cited authors Djuna Barnes and D. H. Lawrence as inspirations, and she states in Volume One of her diaries that she drew inspiration from Marcel Proust, André Gide, Jean Cocteau, Paul Valéry, and Arthur Rimbaud.

According to Volume One of her diaries, 1931–1934, published in 1966, Nin first came across erotica when she returned to Paris with her husband, mother and two brothers in her late teens. They rented the apartment of an American man who was away for the summer, and Nin came across a number of French paperbacks: "One by one, I read these books, which were completely new to me. I had never read erotic literature in America... They overwhelmed me. I was innocent before I read them, but by the time I had read them all, there was nothing I did not know about sexual exploits... I had my degree in erotic lore."

Faced with a desperate need for money, Nin, Henry Miller and some of their friends began in the 1940s to write erotic and pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page, somewhat as a joke. (It is not clear whether Miller actually wrote these stories or merely allowed his name to be used. ) Nin considered the characters in her erotica to be extreme caricatures and never intended the work to be published, but changed her mind in the early 1970s and allowed them to be published as Delta of Venus  and Little Birds. In 2016, a previously undiscovered collection of Nin's erotica, Auletris, was published for the first time.

Nin was a friend, and in some cases lover, of many literary figures, including Miller, John Steinbeck, Antonin Artaud, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, James Agee, James Leo Herlihy, and Lawrence Durrell. Her passionate love affair and friendship with Miller strongly influenced her both sexually and as an author. Claims that Nin was bisexual were given added circulation by the 1990 Philip Kaufman film Henry & June about Miller and his second wife June Miller. The first unexpurgated portion of Nin's journal to be published, Henry and June, makes it clear that Nin was stirred by June to the point of saying (paraphrasing), "I have become June," though it is unclear to what extent she consummated her feelings for her sexually. To both Anaïs and Henry, June was a femme fatale – irresistible, cunning, and erotic. Nin gave June money, jewelry, clothes, often leaving herself without money.

Novels and other publications
In addition to her journals and collections of erotica, Nin wrote several novels, which were frequently associated by critics with the surrealist movement. Her first book of fiction, House of Incest (1936), contains heavily veiled allusions to a brief sexual relationship Nin had with her father in 1933: while visiting her estranged father in France, the then-thirty-year-old Nin had a brief incestuous sexual relationship with him. In 1944, she published a collection of short stories titled Under a Glass Bell, which were reviewed by Edmund Wilson.

Nin was also the author of several works of non-fiction: Her first publication, written during her years studying psychoanalysis, was D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932), an assessment of the works of D.H. Lawrence. In 1968, she published The Novel of the Future, which elaborated on her approach to writing and the writing process.

Personal life
According to her diaries, Vol. 1, 1931–1934, Nin shared a bohemian lifestyle with Henry Miller during her time in Paris. Her husband Guiler is not mentioned anywhere in the published edition of the 1930s parts of her diary (Vol. 1–2) although the opening of Vol. 1 makes it clear that she is married, and the introduction suggests her husband declined to be included in the published diaries. The diaries edited by her second husband, after her death, tell that her union with Miller was very passionate and physical, and that she believed that it was a pregnancy by him that she aborted in 1934.

In 1947, at the age of 44, Nin met former actor Rupert Pole in a Manhattan elevator on her way to a party. The two began a relationship and traveled to California together; Pole was sixteen years her junior. On March 17, 1955, while still married to Guiler, she married Pole at Quartzsite, Arizona, returning with him to live in California. Guiler remained in New York City and was unaware of Nin's second marriage until after her death in 1977, though biographer Deirdre Bair alleges that Guiler knew what was happening while Nin was in California, but consciously "chose not to know".

Nin referred to her simultaneous marriages as her "bicoastal trapeze". According to Deidre Bair:

"[Anaïs] would set up these elaborate façades in Los Angeles and in New York, but it became so complicated that she had to create something she called the lie box. She had this absolutely enormous purse and in the purse she had two sets of checkbooks. One said Anaïs Guiler for New York and another said Anaïs Pole for Los Angeles. She had prescription bottles from California doctors and New York doctors with the two different names. And she had a collection of file cards. And she said, 'I tell so many lies I have to write them down and keep them in the lie box so I can keep them straight.'"

In 1966, Nin had her marriage with Pole annulled, due to the legal issues arising from both Guiler and Pole trying to claim her as a dependent on their federal tax returns. Though the marriage was annulled, Nin and Pole continued to live together as if they were married until her death in 1977. According to Barbara Kraft, prior to her death, Nin had written to Guiler asking for his forgiveness. He responded by writing how meaningful his life had been because of her.

After Guiler's death in 1985, the unexpurgated versions of her journals were commissioned by Pole. Six volumes have been published: Henry and June, Fire, Incest, Nearer the Moon, Mirages, and Trapeze. Pole arranged for Guiler's ashes to be scattered in the same area where Nin's ashes were scattered, Mermaid Cove in Santa Monica Bay. Pole died in July 2006.

Nin once worked at Lawrence R. Maxwell Books, located at 45 Christopher Street in New York City. In addition to her work as a writer, Nin appeared in the Kenneth Anger film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) as Astarte; in the Maya Deren film Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946); and in Bells of Atlantis (1952), a film directed by Guiler under the name "Ian Hugo" with a soundtrack of electronic music by Louis and Bebe Barron. In her later life, Nin worked as a tutor at the International College in Los Angeles.

Death
Nin was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1974. She battled the cancer for two years as it metastasized, and underwent numerous surgical operations, radiation, and chemotherapy. Nin died of the cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, on January 14, 1977.

Her body was cremated, and her ashes were scattered over Santa Monica Bay in Mermaid Cove. Her first husband, Hugh Guiler, died in 1985, and his ashes were scattered in the cove as well. Rupert Pole was named Nin's literary executor, and he arranged to have new, unexpurgated editions of Nin's books and diaries published between 1985 and his death in 2006. Large portions of the diaries are still available only in expurgated form. The originals are located in the UCLA Library.

Legacy
The explosion of the feminist movement in the 1960s gave feminist perspectives on Nin's writings of the past twenty years, which made Nin a popular lecturer at various universities; contrarily, Nin dissociated herself from the political activism of the movement. In 1973, prior to her death, Nin received an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Art. She was also elected to the United States National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1974, and in 1976 was presented with a Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year award.

The Italian film La stanza delle parole (dubbed into English as The Room of Words) was released in 1989 based on the Henry and June diaries. Philip Kaufman directed the 1990 film Henry & June based on Nin's diaries published as Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin. She was portrayed in the film by actress Maria de Medeiros.

In February 2008, poet Steven Reigns organized Anaïs Nin at 105 at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, Los Angeles. Reigns said: "Nin bonded and formed very deep friendships with women and men decades younger than her. Some of them are still living in Los Angeles and I thought it'd be wonderful to have them share their experiences with [Nin]." Bebe Barron, an electronic music pioneer and longtime friend of Nin, made her last public appearance at this event. Reigns also published an essay refuting Bern Porter's claims of a sexual relationship with Nin in the 1930s. Reigns is the President of the Board of the non-profit organization devoted to Nin's legacy, the Anaïs Nin Foundation.

Cuban-American writer Daína Chaviano paid homage to Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller in her novel Gata encerrada (2001), where both characters are portrayed as disembodied spirits whose previous lives they shared with Melisa, the main character—and presumably Chaviano's alter ego—, a young Cuban obsessed with Anaïs Nin.

The Cuban poet and novelist Wendy Guerra, long fascinated with Nin's life and works, published a fictional diary in Nin's voice, Posar desnuda en la Habana (Posing Nude in Havana) in 2012. She explained that "[Nin's] Cuban Diary has very few pages and my delirium was always to write an apocryphal novel; literary conjecture about what might have happened".

On September 27, 2013, screenwriter and author Kim Krizan published an article in The Huffington Post revealing she had found a previously unpublished love letter written by Gore Vidal to Nin. This letter contradicts Gore Vidal's previous characterization of his relationship with Nin, showing that Vidal did have feelings for Nin that he later heavily disavowed in his autobiography, Palimpsest. Krizan did this research in the run up to the release of the fifth volume of Anaïs Nin's uncensored diary, Mirages, for which Krizan provided the foreword.

In 2015, The Erotic Adventures of Anais Nin a documentary film directed by Sarah Aspinall, was released, in which Lucy Cohu portrayed Nin's character.

In 2019, Kim Krizan published Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin, an examination of long-buried letters, papers, and original manuscripts Krizan found while doing archival work in Nin's Los Angeles home. Also that year, Routledge published the book Anaïs Nin: A Myth of Her Own by Clara Oropeza, that analyzes Nin's literature and literary theory through the perspective of mythological studies and depth psychology.

In 2002, Alissa Levy Caiano produced a short film called The All-Seeing based on Nin's short story of the same name in Under a Glass Bell.

In 2021, the porn film company Thousand Faces released a short film called Mathilde based on Nin's story of the same name in Delta of Venus.

Diaries

 * The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin (1914–1931), in four volumes
 * The Diary of Anaïs Nin, in seven volumes, edited by herself
 * Henry and June: From a Journal of Love. The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931–1932) (1986), edited by Rupert Pole after her death
 * Incest: From a Journal of Love (1992)
 * Fire: From a Journal of Love (1995)
 * Nearer the Moon: From a Journal of Love (1996)
 * Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939–1947 (2013)
 * Trapeze: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947–1955 (2017)
 * The Diary of Others: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1955–1966 (2021)
 * A Joyous Transformation: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1966–1977 (forthcoming)

Correspondence

 * A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller 1932–1953 (1988)
 * Letters to a friend in Australia (1992)
 * Arrows of Longing: Correspondence Between Anaïs Nin & Felix Pollack, 1952–1976 (1998)
 * Morale des épicentres (2004)
 * Reunited: The Correspondence of Anaïs and Joaquin Nin, 1933–1940 (2020)
 * Letters to Lawrence Durrell 1937–1977 (2020)

Novels

 * House of Incest (1936)
 * Winter of Artifice (1939)
 * Cities of the Interior (1959), in five volumes:
 * Ladders to Fire
 * Children of the Albatross
 * The Four-Chambered Heart
 * A Spy in the House of Love
 * Seduction of the Minotaur, originally published as Solar Barque (1958).
 * Collages (1964)

Short stories

 * Waste of Timelessness: And Other Early Stories (written before 1932, published posthumously)
 * Under a Glass Bell (1944)
 * Delta of Venus (1977)
 * Little Birds (1979)
 * Auletris (2016)

Non-fiction

 * D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932)
 * The Novel of the Future (1968)
 * A Woman Speaks (1975)
 * In Favor of the Sensitive Man (1976)
 * The Mystic of Sex: Uncollected Writings: 1930-1974 (1995)

Filmography

 * Lascivious Folk Ballet (1946) - (Outtakes from Ritual in Transfigured Time).
 * Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946): Short film, dir. Maya Deren
 * Bells of Atlantis (1952): Short film, dir. Ian Hugo
 * Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954): Short film, dir. Kenneth Anger
 * Jazz of Lights (1954)
 * Melodic Inversion (1958)
 * Lectures pour tous (1964)
 * Anaïs Nin Her Diary (1966)
 * Un moment avec une grande figure de la littérature, Anaïs Nin (3 May 1968)
 * The Henry Miller Odyssey (1969).
 * Through the Magiscope (1969).
 * Anaïs Nin at the University of California, Berkeley (December 1971)
 * Anaïs Nin at Hampshire College, (1972)
 * 'Ouvrez les guillemets (11 November 1974)
 * Journal de Paris (21 November 1974)
 * Anais Nin Observed (1974): Documentary, dir. Robert Snyder

title: Anaïs Nin


text:
AIM (software)

AIM (AOL Instant Messenger, sometimes stylized as aim) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time.

AIM was popular by the late 1990s, in United States and other countries, and was the leading instant messaging application in that region into the following decade. Teens and college students were known to use the messenger's away message feature to keep in touch with friends, often frequently changing their away message throughout a day or leaving a message up with one's computer left on to inform buddies of their ongoings, location, parties, thoughts, or jokes. AIM's popularity declined as AOL subscribers started decreasing and steeply towards the 2010s, as Gmail's Google Talk, SMS, and Internet social networks, like Facebook gained popularity. Its fall has often been compared with other once-popular Internet services, such as Myspace.

In June 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications. In June 2017, Verizon combined AOL and Yahoo into its subsidiary Oath Inc. (now called Yahoo). The company discontinued AIM as a service on December 15, 2017.

History
In May 1997, AIM was released unceremoniously as a stand-alone download for Microsoft Windows. AIM was an outgrowth of "online messages" in the original platform written in PL/1 on a Stratus computer by Dave Brown. At one time, the software had the largest share of the instant messaging market in North America, especially in the United States (with 52% of the total reported ). This does not include other instant messaging software related to or developed by AOL, such as ICQ and iChat.

During its heyday, its main competitors were ICQ (which AOL acquired in 1998), Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger. AOL particularly had a rivalry or "chat war" with PowWow and Microsoft, starting in 1999. There were several attempts from Microsoft to simultaneously log into their own and AIM's protocol servers. AOL was unhappy about this and started blocking MSN Messenger from being able to access AIM. This led to efforts by many companies to challenge the AOL and Time Warner merger on the grounds of antitrust behaviour, leading to the formation of the OpenNet Coalition.

Official mobile versions of AIM appeared as early as 2001 on Palm OS through the AOL application. Third-party applications allowed it to be used in 2002 for the Sidekick. A version for Symbian OS was announced in 2003 as were others for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile

After 2012, stand-alone official AIM client software included advertisements and was available for Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Classic Mac OS, macOS, Android, iOS, and BlackBerry OS.

Usage decline and product sunset
Around 2011, AIM started to lose popularity rapidly, partly due to the quick rise of Gmail and its built-in real-time Google Chat instant messenger integration in 2011 and because many people migrated to SMS or iMessages text messaging and later, social networking websites and apps for instant messaging, in particular, Facebook Messenger, which was released as a standalone application the same year. AOL made a partnership to integrate AIM messaging in Google Talk, and had a feature for AIM users to send SMS messages directly from AIM to any number, as well as for SMS users to send an IM to any AIM user.

As of June 2011, one source reported AOL Instant Messenger market share had collapsed to 0.73%. However, this number only reflected installed IM applications, and not active users. The engineers responsible for AIM claimed that they were unable to convince AOL management that free was the future.

On March 3, 2012, AOL ended employment of AIM's development staff while leaving it active and with help support still provided. On October 6, 2017, it was announced that the AIM service would be discontinued on December 15; however, a non-profit development team known as Wildman Productions started up a server for older versions of AOL Instant Messenger, known as AIM Phoenix.

The "AIM Man"
The AIM mascot was designed by JoRoan Lazaro and was implemented in the first release in 1997. This was a yellow stickman-like figure, often called the "Running Man". The mascot appeared on all AIM logos and most wordmarks, and always appeared at the top of the buddy list. AIM's popularity in the late 1990s and the 2000s led to the “Running Man” becoming a familiar brand on the Internet. After over 14 years, the iconic logo disappeared as part of the AIM rebranding in 2011. However, in August 2013, the "Running Man" returned. It was used for other AOL services like AOL Top Speed and is featured in a theme on AOL Mail.

In 2014, a Complex editor called it a "symbol of America". In April 2015, the Running Man was officially featured in the Virgin London Marathon, dressed by a person for the AOL-partnered Free The Children charity.

Protocol
The standard protocol that AIM clients used to communicate is called Open System for CommunicAtion in Realtime (OSCAR). Most AOL-produced versions of AIM and popular third party AIM clients use this protocol. However, AOL also created a simpler protocol called TOC that lacks many of OSCAR's features, but was sometimes used for clients that only require basic chat functionality. The TOC/TOC2 protocol specifications were made available by AOL, while OSCAR is a closed protocol that third parties had to reverse-engineer.

In January 2008, AOL introduced experimental Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) support for AIM, allowing AIM users to communicate using the standardized, open-source XMPP. However, in March 2008, this service was discontinued. In May 2011, AOL started offering limited XMPP support. On March 1, 2017, AOL announced (via XMPP-login-time messages ) that the AOL XMPP gateway would be desupported, effective March 28, 2017.

Privacy
For privacy regulations, AIM had strict age restrictions. AIM accounts are available only for people over the age of 13; children younger than that were not permitted access to AIM.

Under the AIM Privacy Policy, AOL had no rights to read or monitor any private communications between users. The profile of the user had no privacy.

In November 2002, AOL targeted the corporate industry with Enterprise AIM Services (EAS), a higher security version of AIM.

If public content was accessed, it could be used for online, print or broadcast advertising, etc. This was outlined in the policy and terms of service: "... you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium". This allowed anything users posted to be used without a separate request for permission.

AIM's security was called into question. AOL stated that it had taken great pains to ensure that personal information will not be accessed by unauthorized members, but that it cannot guarantee that it will not happen.

AIM was different from other clients, such as Yahoo! Messenger, in that it did not require approval from users to be added to other users' buddy lists. As a result, it was possible for users to keep other unsuspecting users on their buddy list to see when they were online, read their status and away messages, and read their profiles. There was also a Web API to display one's status and away message as a widget on one's webpage. Though one could block a user from communicating with them and seeing their status, this did not prevent that user from creating a new account that would not automatically be blocked and therefore able to track their status. A more conservative privacy option was to select a menu feature that only allowed communication with users on one's buddy list; however, this option also created the side-effect of blocking all users who were not on one's buddy list. Users could also choose to be invisible to all.

Chat robots
AOL and various other companies supplied robots (bots) on AIM that could receive messages and send a response based on the bot's purpose. For example, bots could help with studying, like StudyBuddy. Some were made to relate to children and teenagers, like Spleak.

Others gave advice. The more useful chat bots had features like the ability to play games, get sport scores, weather forecasts or financial stock information. Users were able to talk to automated chat bots that could respond to natural human language. They were primarily put into place as a marketing strategy and for unique advertising options. It was used by advertisers to market products or build better consumer relations.

Before the inclusions of such bots, the other bots DoorManBot and AIMOffline provided features that were provided by AOL for those who needed it. ZolaOnAOL and ZoeOnAOL were short-lived bots that ultimately retired their features in favor of SmarterChild.

URI scheme
AOL Instant Messenger's installation process automatically installed an extra URI scheme ("protocol") handler into some Web browsers, so URIs beginning " " could open a new AIM window with specified parameters. This was similar in function to the  URI scheme, which created a new e-mail message using the system's default mail program. For instance, a webpage might have included a link like the following in its HTML source to open a window for sending a message to the AIM user notarealuser: Send Message

To specify a message body, the  parameter was used, so the link location would have looked like this: aim:goim?screenname=notarealuser&message=This+is+my+message

To specify an away message, the message parameter was used, so the link location would have looked like this: aim:goaway?message=Hello,+my+name+is+Bill When placing this inside a URL link, an AIM user could click on the URL link and the away message "Hello, my name is Bill" would instantly become their away message.

To add a buddy, the addbuddy message was used, with the "screenname" parameter aim:addbuddy?screenname=notarealuser This type of link was commonly found on forum profiles to easily add contacts.

Vulnerabilities
AIM had security weaknesses that have enabled exploits to be created that used third-party software to perform malicious acts on users' computers. Although most were relatively harmless, such as being kicked off the AIM service, others performed potentially dangerous actions, such as sending viruses. Some of these exploits relied on social engineering to spread by automatically sending instant messages that contained a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) accompanied by text suggesting the receiving user click on it, an action which leads to infection, i.e., a trojan horse. These messages could easily be mistaken as coming from a friend and contain a link to a Web address that installed software on the user's computer to restart the cycle.

iPhone application
On March 6, 2008, during Apple Inc.'s iPhone SDK event, AOL announced that they would be releasing an AIM application for iPhone and iPod Touch users. The application was available for free from the App Store, but the company also provided a paid version, which displayed no advertisements. Both were available from the App Store. The AIM client for iPhone and iPod Touch supported standard AIM accounts, as well as MobileMe accounts. There was also an express version of AIM accessible through the Safari browser on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

In 2011, AOL launched an overhaul of their Instant Messaging service. Included in the update was a brand new iOS application for iPhone and iPod Touch that incorporated all the latest features. A brand new icon was used for the application, featuring the new cursive logo for AIM. The user-interface was entirely redone for the features including: a new buddy list, group messaging, in-line photos and videos, as well as improved file-sharing.

Version 5.0.5, updated in March 2012, it supported more social stream features, much like Facebook and Twitter, as well as the ability to send voice messages up to 60 seconds long.

iPad application
On April 3, 2010, Apple released the first generation iPad. Along with this newly released device AOL released the AIM application for iPad. It was built entirely from scratch for the new version of iOS with a specialized user-interface for the device. It supported geolocation, Facebook status updates and chat, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, and many other social networking platforms.

AIM Express
AIM Express ran in a pop-up browser window. It was intended for use by people who are unwilling or unable to install a standalone application or those at computers that lack the AIM application. AIM Express supported many of the standard features included in the stand-alone client, but did not provide advanced features like file transfer, audio chat, video conferencing, or buddy info. It was implemented in Adobe Flash. It was an upgrade to the prior AOL Quick Buddy, which was later available for older systems that cannot handle Express before being discontinued. Express and Quick Buddy were similar to MSN Web Messenger and Yahoo! Web Messenger. This web version evolved into AIM.com's web-based messenger.

AIM Pages
AIM Pages was a free website released in May 2006 by AOL in replacement of AIMSpace. Anyone who had an AIM user name and was at least 16 years of age could create their own web page (to display an online, dynamic profile) and share it with buddies from their AIM Buddy list.

Layout
AIM Pages included links to the email and Instant Message of the owner, along with a section listing the owners "buddies", which included AIM user names. It was possible to create modules in a Module T microformat. Video hosting sites like Netflix and YouTube could be added to ones AIM Page, as well as other sites like Amazon.com. It was also possible to insert HTML code.

The main focus of AIM Pages was the integration of external modules, like those listed above, into the AOL Instant Messenger experience.

Discontinuation
By late 2007, AIM Pages were discontinued. After AIM Pages shutdown, links to AIM Pages were redirected to AOL Lifestream, AOL's new site aimed at collecting external modules in one place, independent of AIM buddies. AOL Lifestream was shut down February 24, 2017.

AIM for Mac
AOL released an all-new AIM for the Mac on September 29, 2008, and the final build on December 15, 2008. The redesigned AIM for Mac is a full universal binary Cocoa API application that supports both Tiger and Leopard — Mac OS X 10.4.8 (and above) or Mac OS X 10.5.3 (and above). On October 1, 2009, AOL released AIM 2.0 for Mac.

AIM real-time IM
This feature was available for AIM 7 and allowed for a user to see what the other is typing as it is being done. It was developed and built with assistance from Trace Research and Development Centre at University of Wisconsin–Madison and Gallaudet University. The application provides visually impaired users the ability to convert messages from text (words) to speech. For the application to work users must have AIM 6.8 or higher, as it is not compatible with older versions of AIM software, AIM for Mac or iChat.

AIM to mobile (messaging to phone numbers)
This feature allows text messaging to a phone number (text messaging is less functional than instant messaging).

AIM Phoneline
AIM Phoneline was a Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service  provided via the AIM application. It was also known to work with Apple's iChat Client. The service was officially closed to its customers on January 13, 2009. The closing of the free service caused the number associated with the service to be disabled and not transferable for a different service. AIM Phoneline website was recommending users switch to a new service named AIM Call Out, also discontinued now.

Launched on May 16, 2006, AIM Phoneline provided users the ability to have several local numbers, allowing AIM users to receive free incoming calls. The service allowed users to make calls to landlines and mobile devices through the use of a computer. The service, however, was only free for receiving and AOL charged users $14.95 a month for an unlimited calling plan. In order to use AIM Phoneline users had to install the latest free version of AIM Triton software and needed a good set of headphones with a boom microphone. It could take several days after a user signed up before it started working.

AIM Call Out
AIM Call Out is a discontinued Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service provided by AOL via its AIM application that replaced the defunct AIM Phoneline service in November 2007. It did not depend on the AIM client and could be used with only an AIM screenname via the WebConnect feature or a dedicated SIP device. The AIM Call Out service was shut down on March 25, 2009.

Security
On November 4, 2014, AIM scored one out of seven points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. AIM received a point for encryption during transit, but lost points because communications are not encrypted with a key to which the provider has no access, i.e., the communications are not end-to-end encrypted, users can't verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen, (i.e., the service does not provide forward secrecy), the code is not open to independent review, (i.e., the code is not open-source), the security design is not properly documented, and there has not been a recent independent security audit. BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), Ebuddy XMS, Hushmail, Kik Messenger, Skype, Viber, and Yahoo! Messenger also scored one out of seven points.

title: AIM (software)