Presence for Mobile Phones?
by Raju Vegesna on August 28, 2010
How often do we see mobile phones ringing/vibrating in a meeting? I see this in almost every meeting. We have an option to set our online presence to ‘Busy’ to avoid any IMs, Skype calls etc. But sadly, we don’t have a similar option for our mobile phones.
I like working late and more often than not, I am up till 3 or 4AM. The worst thing I want to see in the morning is a random call waking me up at 8AM. The caller has no idea on my state/availability. This is one of the advantages online communication channels (like IM, audio, video etc) have over mobile phones. I can set my presence to ‘Do Not Disturb’ till I am ready for an interaction. As a user, I’d like to see a similar option on my mobile phone.
Can this be done? Absolutely! But there has to be an open protocol which every service provider has to adhere to.
Our cell phones are always connected to our mobile networks. So, service providers can maintain the presence info of their customers and share this with other service providers. This is no different from how multi-protocol IM Networks work. Each service provider is like an IM Network (Skype, Yahoo, AOL etc). If calls are within the network, it is straight forward. While you try to call me, the network can inform you that I am busy (based on what I define on my mobile phone). For calls between networks, they should share this presence info (an alternate to XMPP?) to enable this. There has be an open protocol for service providers to exchange this info.
To extend this idea, I should be able to unify my online presence with my phone presence. If I am in a meeting, the ‘Do Not Disturb’ status I set online should also apply to my mobile phone. This way, I can interact when I am ready to. Not when the other person wants to.
Given the state of service provider’s ‘innovation’ in US, I am too not confident on seeing something like this soon. I hope someone (Google, Apple?) will be able to push them towards this.
7 comments
Good one Raju!
We definitely need one such feature in phone.
by Gopi on August 29, 2010 at 5:13 AM. #
[...] this soon. I hope someone (Google, Apple?) will be able to push them towards this.(Cross-posted @ Raju's blog) Posted Under : Cloud Technology Tags mobility cellular presence Permalink Trackback No one has [...]
by Presence for Mobile Phones? | CloudAve on August 30, 2010 at 3:42 AM. #
Nice thought.
by Murty on August 30, 2010 at 5:12 AM. #
Let the mobile number portability come through. The providers would be forced to bring this and more value added features lest their survival is challenged.
by Deepak Vasudevan on August 30, 2010 at 8:47 AM. #
I thought of this years ago and wish I would have patented the idea so every cell phone company would have had to come to me to buy the right to use it! Don’t even worry about trying to tie in your online presence with your cell phone. There really just needs to be a simple application for cell phones that lets you do the following. Simply open the application on your phone, either A.) Type a message so that when somebody texts you, they automatically receive a text back with whatever message you wish for them to see( “I’m taking a bath, i’ll get back to you!), or B.) Open the application and leave a voice message,so when somebody calls you, after the first ring they hear the audio message you left like “hey in a meeting i’m free in 1 hour.” It really can’t be that hard for these genius programmers to make an application as easy as that… Keep it simple. It’s the exact same as the away message on AOL instant messenger or MSN… except it would be on cell phones. I can’t make this, but I know some smart asshole can. And the greatest part, everybody would use that application. Especially people who have unlimited texts.
by frosteh snowman on September 1, 2010 at 1:34 PM. #
This is a common feature in the Danish market and has been since approx. 2003. The most common way is to present your local extension ( e.g. on your company pbx) to everybody and control that trough a local application. ( My company develops that kind of UC software, Total-View) The Mobile Operators deliver presence information to the Company’s Totalview server using a web service. Very simple and fast
by piddi on September 24, 2010 at 6:10 AM. #
Given the complex life style that most of us are leading, there is surely a great value in an advanced presence service and application that is described above. I still wonder why there hasn’t been a strong demand for such a service/application.
It is even more interesting to notice how some markets have implemented this in the past:
* Back in 2001 DoCoMo and KDDI implemented the network support for profiles like “driving”, “personal”, etc. The drive mode for example will not disturb the person who is driving. Instead, the calling party receives a voice response stating that the called party is driving. This must have lowered the road accidents.
* Few years back, I was part of a team that developed an integrated contacts app to show presence information (status icon) from multiple IM clients. Network level service/support was not needed, as it is purely the application that aggregates the presence information from multiple IMs and display it against the contact in your phone book on a phone. For example, if I am trying to reach Raju and his Skype and AOL status is away, I could see that below his name in my phonebook (assuming he is listed in my phonebook).
* As an extension to the presence support described in bullet 2, we added some intelligence and called it context-aware application. For example, what this could do is to check the calendar and switch your availability/presence to “no calls, may be IM or email” during the period of your meeting. Again this is customizable. This could also be linked to your location, network strength, network status, etc to create more awareness to the context.
While these are either existing or have existed (commercially or prototypes), there hasn’t been enough push from either the carriers or the phone manufacturers. I think it is mostly due to lack of strong demand from consumer point of view and hence it didn’t come up in the market research. Sometimes, consumers are not aware of the possibilities and it is the innovators (carriers or manufacturers) job to create awareness in order to create the demand. On second thoughts, if only I had time, I think I should write an app that does this on android and iphone.
by Satish Varma Srivatsavaya on January 14, 2011 at 4:25 AM. #