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December 20, 2006

Why not call "new presence" availability?

Alec Saunders has just published an excellent article on the future of presence.  If you follow VoIP, this is the Saunders who brought us the Voice 2.0 Manifesto (October 2005).  I highly recommend Alec's current essay on the "new presence," but I have some thoughts, of course :-)

Can't we change the name?  With my mobile phone on my person I am always "present" but I may not be available.  Alec's essay covers these concepts, but why not suggest a new name?  something around the word "availability" would be good.

I want a communications interface that helps me capture my preferences.  When I receive a call on my mobile, there's a one-click way to capture the caller ID into a phone book entry.  I need comparable (and better) help in creating and maintaining profiles.  If, in a particular circumstance, I decline a call from a specific caller, the phone should recognize this behavior and ask me "Do you always want to send this caller to voice mail when your phone is in vibrate mode?"  and so on.

And there's one place where I disagree with Alec.  I'm not worried about the proliferation of standards and semi-closed networks.  Just as Skype came on the scene with a proprietary system that "just worked" I expect someone to solve the "availability" problem without waiting for standards or heterogeneous networks.  I already run four instant messaging clients on my laptop.  A single client would be nice, but it's not that important.  Once we finally learn how availability should work from an existing player like Skype or from an entirely new overlay network (as Skype was a few years ago), then we can worry about consolidation.

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Why not call "new presence" availability?:

» The Absence of Presence from Realtime Community | Unified Communications
Alec Saunders wrote a deep, thoughtful post the other day. Sometimes I hate it when he does that because I feel an urge to jump in, but can't find the time. Today I've worked on this response, and lost my work twice, so my frustration mounts.To set the... [Read More]

» Alec Saunders: "New Presence and the Voice 2.0 Manifesto" - how do we move to the next level of presence awareness? from Disruptive Telephony
Given that I view "presence" as one of the more potentially disruptive elements of IP telephony, I was pleased to see that over on his blog Alec wrote a very lengthy and insightful piece entitled "'New Presence' and the Voice [Read More]

» Interpresence from The Giacomo Vacca Blog
The more I think about the last discussion on advanced presence, the more I need a term to describe it. Brough Turner suggested to use the term "availability", while Luca mentioned "Rich Presence ++". As I wrote before, I fully agree and look with i... [Read More]

» The New Presence model from The Giacomo Vacca Blog
Alec Saunders presents a new concept, deriving directly from its 2005 Voice 2.0 Manifesto: The New Presence model. Indeed, I don’t have many comments to do, because I find myself perfectly aligned with this model: Profile, Relationships and Context ... [Read More]

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