Beyond the PSTN: Presence & Instant Messaging

Presence, i.e., Who is available?
Location, i.e., Where are they?: office, home, traveling, …
Call state: Are they busy (in a call) or not?
Willingness: Are they available or not?
Preferred medium: text message, e-mail, voice, video, …
Preferences (caller and callee preferences)

See Sinnreich and Johnston’s Chapter 11 (Presence and Instant Communications).

Transcript

[slide60] As I mentioned earlier, it's far more than just voice over IP for conversations, it's also presence and instant messaging. And what presence is about is the question of, is someone available? Location, where are they, are they home, their office, perhaps I don't want to call them if they're away from their office, or I want to call them only if they're in their laboratory or something like that. Call state, are they already busy or not? Willingness, are they available or not? It's now not a good time to disturb them. Preferred medium, maybe they would prefer to have text messages, or maybe they would like calls, or perhaps even they want video. And preferences, and here we again have to split into the caller preferences, what would the caller prefer, and what would the callee prefer? And ideally we want to of course match those up well.