Understanding Presence (lecture 5)

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

March 1, 2007 [3408 views]

This week’s activity and this lecture are about presence or presence awareness; another emerging feature of mobile systems.

Many of you confused location aware and presence aware systems and although they are linked you should separate them in your minds.

What is presence?

• It is the ability to monitor and respond to the state, status or availability of a user within an information system
• It becomes possible when a user is “always on”; permanently connected
• Presence may be expressed simply: I am online/I am offline
• Presence may be more complex: I am currently in a meeting but may be contacted on my mobile in an emergency
• Often combined with location based services to link “I am here” and “I am available”
• US LBS/Presence service Loopt

Possible applications

• Dating: I am nearby, have the following profile and available Bluetooth enabled friend finder Mobiluck
• Knowledge exchange: Does anyone (available) have the answer to the following question?
• Extend real-time communication (email, calling or IM): your availability could be set according to the task you are doing, calendar information or proximity to your desk
• Unified messaging: bringing together phone, email, calendars and instant messaging
• Show availability: show who is available among your colleagues (or friends) right now
• Context related data according to location and presence: traffic information, emergency information
• Message routing: if I am busy working route my voice messages to my email (as recordings)

How would presence be implemented?

• Your availability can either be pushed (sent) or pulled (requested)
• Need standard protocols that allow status messages to be sent between applications (and servers) across the internet. A number of different standards have been proposed but have so far failed to achieve a consensus.
• Jabber implements XMPP: an example of an IM & presence protocol
• Wikipedia article on Jabber and XMPP (Extensible Message and Presence Protocol)
• Check out latest XMPP and Jabber information at Jabber.org
• Blocking systems such as those used in IM could be applied to prevent unauthorised people monitoring your presence.

Do you want people to know what you are doing?

Take a look at some of the results from this week’s activity…

Your status right now…

Email application open and auto checking for mail 58%
I have a Blackberry receiving email 4%
MSN or another IM system active 66%
IM Status set to anything but Available 20%
Mobile phone switched on 87%
Mobile phone switched on but silent 43%
Text messages recently received but yet read 47%

Will sometimes send “Private calls” to voicemail 55%
Have set your own voicemail message 28%

You are worried about: stalking, privacy, revealing that your home is unoccupied, being spied on at work, the work involved in maintaining your status, intrusion, faked availability, lack of private time, people ignoring your status “I am extremely busy”

You like the idea of: knowing that a person is busy before you call, preventing unnecessary calls or messages, showing that you are free to chat, finding friends nearby, single points of presence (contact)

Recent comments:

What do you think?

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