AOL has brought three new iPhone OS applications to the market: AIM, AOL Radio, and Truveo, the leading video search engine.  Each of them are available as free downloads from the Apple App Store now.

“With AIM, AOL Radio and Truveo for the iPhone, consumers now have access to the world’s largest instant messaging network, over 350 streaming radio stations and millions of online videos,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL. “Over the past twelve months, AOL has revitalized its Mac development efforts and we’re thrilled to be bringing our world-class communications and multi-media experiences to iPhone users around the world via the App Store.”

The new AIM, AOL Radio and Truveo applications for the iPhone were built using Apple’s iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) and provide a great user experience, with added features unique to the iPhone.

• AIM for iPhone brings together all of the core features of AIM – such as real-time communication, the Buddy List window and the ability to see when friends and contacts are online and available to chat – and combines them with a host of new capabilities that make IM’ing from the iPhone easy and convenient, whether over a Wi-Fi, EDGE, or 3G network.

AIM has been designed from the ground up to take advantage of the iPhone’s unique user interface and advanced capabilities. New features developed specifically for the iPhone include the use of Gestures, which allows users to simply tap to start a new message or to swipe a finger to switch between conversations; Favorites, which puts the buddies with whom you keep in touch at your fingertips; and the ability to easily incorporate a photo taken with the iPhone’s built in camera as a Buddy Icon. AIM for iPhone will be available to users worldwide.

• AOL Radio for iPhone gives users in the U.S. immediate, free access to more than 350 best-in-breed stations including more than 150 local CBS RADIO stations and custom channels and more than 200 AOL Radio stations spanning 25 musical genres. AOL Radio for iPhone leverages the iPhone’s Core Location framework to detect a user’s location and automatically displays CBS RADIO stations nearest to the user. Additionally, AOL Radio for iPhone automatically adapts to the current connection speed of the device providing low-bandwidth streams when on a cellular network versus higher quality audio for Wi-Fi connections.

At Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in June, AOL Radio was highlighted during the iPhone Developer Showcase and received the Apple Design Award for “Best Entertainment Application.”

• Truveo Mobile Video Search for iPhone maximizes the device’s premium video experience and makes it easy for users to search and browse through millions of online videos while on the go. Truveo’s leading video search engine provides direct links to video content that’s been optimized for the iPhone from a wide variety of video sources including CNN, Discovery Channel, HBO, NBC, PBS, Comedy Central, MTV and YouTube. Localized versions of Truveo Mobile Video Search for iPhone will be available for the U.S., Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK, with support for additional countries to follow in the coming months.

All three applications are available for free from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or here.

In addition to the AIM, AOL Radio and Truveo applications for the iPhone, AOL has also optimized many of its popular websites and services for the iPhone’s Safari browser including; AOL.com, AOL Mail, AOL Mobile Search, AOL Money & Finance, Moviefone, AOL Food, AOL Horoscopes, AOL TV Listings and AOL Shopping.

Following up on the Reddit announcement that they were opening up their platform to third parties, Mixx has announced that they are enabling third parties to have their own branded “Mixx” site.  If you are not familiar with the company, Mixx is a Digg competitor who gained a significant growth in market share when their Mixx button was placed throughout the CNN network.  They offer quite a few differentiating factors such as:

• Sub categorization placement for submissions, you can place your articles, photo or video into 8 categories on the site.
• Multiple levels for stories, this means that your submission is not lost quite as easily as on Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon.
• A clean and easy to navigate interface that is customized to your interests.  When you sign in, your homepage has the upcoming and popular stories from the categories you initially expressed interest in.  So when I sign in, I automatically see all most popular technology stories posted.

And with their most recent announcement, third parties can now set up their own branded “Mixx” sites.  Most likely the best way to set these up would be to take a particular vertical and focus on it.  So a technology blog or forum should created a technology specific news aggregation community.  It may appear that Mixx is simply responding to the announcement of Reddit from last week, however they say that this is not the case.  Instead they say that this move was previously planned and is an extension of their Mixx Groups initiative.  Whether that is the case or not, I have always preferred Mixx to Reddit or Digg, so I think this was a good move for them strategically since it is an additional differentiating factor for those wanting to migrate from Digg.  (BTW, the screenshot in this post is an example of a branded Mixx community).