Bookmarklets for meebo

Update: meebo now has a very nice single sign-on implementation. These bookmarklets no longer work, and thankfully, are no longer necessary. Thanks, meebo.

I'm a big fan of meebo. I think it's creative, technically impressive, and very handy. As I experiment with moving as much of my desktop to the web as I can, meebo is a very important component since IM is almost as important to me as email. The only problem with meebo is that it's not as easy to use as my two other favorite IM clients (Adium on OS X and Gaim on Windows), mostly because it does not automatically log me in. Frankly, I'm actually glad I don't get automatically logged in since that would probably mean that meebo would have to store my passwords. I fully trust meebo's intentions, but I'm not sure I want to give anyone my AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, and Google Talk credentials.

My solution was to write some bookmarklets that log in for me. The bookmarklets contain my usernames and passwords which essentially mean they are stored in my browser rather than on anyone's server, so they are as safe as my workstation is secure. For a little added security, the passwords in the bookmarklets are Base64 encoded which does not actually encrypt them, but it would protect them from the nefarious "quick-glance" attack.

There are step-by-step instructions below, but in general, the way these bookmarklets work is that you drag them into your bookmark bar (or otherwise bookmark the links), edit them so that they contain your usernames and passwords, go to meebo.com, and click on the bookmarklets to automatically drop your credentials into the appropriate fields. The bookmarklets will work whether you are logging in for the first time on the page with the four login forms, or whether you are already logged in to one or more systems.

After some usability testing (on myself), I actually decided not to make the bookmarklets fully log in you, but rather they fill in your credentials, then wait for you to submit the form yourself. I found that having a confirmation step between filling in your credentials and submitting the form was preferable, but if you disagree, you can poke through the code and make the appropriate changes (look for the commented out pieces).

To use the meebo sign-on bookmarklets:

1. Drag the links below into your bookmark bar, or otherwise bookmark them.
2. Edit each bookmarklet and replace "your_username" and "your_password" with your username and your password. Your password must be Base64 encoded which you can do easily here.
3. Go to meebo.com and click on one or more bookmarklets. Again, they will work on the initial login screen, and after you are logged in to one or more systems.

Bookmark the following links:

• AIM
• ICQ
• Yahoo!
• Jabber
• MSN

And now some disclaimers:

• These were only tested in Firefox, mostly because of time, and because I figured anyone who would want to do this type of thing is probably using Firefox.
• These are not endorsed my meebo. They are entirely my own creation.
• Use at your own discretion and risk. No warranty, expressed or implied. Provided "as is". You assume full responsibility. Etc, etc, etc.
• Understand that you are storing your passwords for these services in your browsers in an unencrypted format. Yes, they are encoded, but encoding is not encryption. Anyone who has access to your computer will have access to your passwords. (This is an acceptable risk as far as I'm concerned, though. If some evildoer has access to your computer, you probably have bigger things to worry about than your IM credentials.)
• This code is operating in a way that is not supported by meebo which means these bookmarklets can stop working at any time, and if they stop working, I may or may not have time to fix them right away, depending on what other projects I have going. In fact, it's a pretty safe bet that they will break eventually since I'm hooking into non-public and thoroughly obfuscated code. They'll be fun while they last, though, and maybe meebo will even give us some public and supported JavaScript APIs for Christmas.

Comments

[josh]

does anyone know any codes for meebo as my school has filterd it please for example (216.129.112.98)

[katie]

try 1 of these
216.129.113.6
216.129.112.121

[emma]

try
69.36.226.109
69.36.226.106

[216.129.112.69]

ther ya go

[tara]

does any one have any codes for meebo school has blocked them.

[damo]

does any one have any codes for meebo college has blocked them. if u have e-mail me on damo_tart1989@hotmail.com

[Maxy]

Gosh this impossible my college got nothing to do except blocking all possible ways of getting on MSN and orkut... even the coded links are blocked... can any one help me?

[diego]

So the codes only work with firefox... but do I have to copy everything?
javascript:var uid='username';var pw64=password';function g(id){return document.getElementById(id)};var keyStr='ABCD
erything?? substituting my information?