In the middle of a softball interview by Gartner's Tom Austin, Ray makes an interesting point about how stupid the current phone system is because it doesn't include presence, when it easily could:

Ray Ozzie

[from The Gartner Fellows: Ray Ozzie's Interview]

Notification and awareness is one of the most interesting uses of wireless devices that has yet to emerge. We're moving into a world of pervasive awareness, where you can control the publishing of awareness of your location, "projecting" to others your interruptability and the modes of communications that you find the most useful at the moment. For example -- when you're driving and have your hands on the wheel, you'd rather suggest to others that they call you rather than "texting" or emailing you. Or maybe they should just let you concentrate.

Projecting your interruptability to others might be really easy if we integrated our handheld wireless devices with our varied communication services. Take, for example, the phone. Why isn't it possible -- without navigating a million menus [which I guess means running an IM client on your phone] -- to slip a little button on the side to select one of four desired presence or interruptability states, customized to you: I'm in a meeting; I'm available to my "intimates"; I'm available for any interruptions; or "do not disturb". This state could be easily published by your wireless operator, through Web Services, to the on-line buddy list of your IM or email programs, or directly to other people's phones.

The rest of the interview honestly baffles me: a lot of looking back at the trends that have brought us to today, but not very much on where Groove might be heading. My current sense is that Groove has wound up in a niche -- a relatively big one, I grant -- supporting mobile groups that don't share a common server, such as the ad hoc interagency groups working in Homeland Security, but who need a secure file sharing platform. But honestly, the Groove add-on tools are a joke, and I can't fathom why Groove doesn't interoperate with other IM networks. With the lovey-dovey relationship they have with Microsoft, you'd expect at least MSN interop. These limitations -- along with the small market penetration -- makes using Groove relatively unattractive for anyone not in exactly the sweet spot for the product.

But the comments about phones and phones companies missing the boat on presence brings to mind something that came up in a phone conversation I had earlier this week with the CEO of Vonage, Jeffrey Citron. I had emailed him about the concept of an acquisition of Vonage by one of the established instant messaging networks. Initially, my interest was driven by the idea -- the power of fusing together the largest VoIP telephone company, with over 350,000 North American users with a public instant messaging network. He very carefully said something like "It would be inappropriate to discuss those rumors." Hmmm. That piqued my curiosity, of course.

But the discussion that followed was me trying to steer him toward IM integration, and him studiously staying away. We discussed the recent Viseon videophone announcement, and I pointed out that millions of webcams have already been sold, and are already running on PCs: why not build a desktop client for Vonage that leverages those. Citron argued that the quality of the webcams is uneven; well, sure. But there they are, and people use them already with the various IM services. So maybe its a strategy of not building stuff that your likely acquirers have already built?

On the otherside, taking use of smarter devices -- like a Vonage phone box that would use wifi or bluetooth to talk to portable or cell phones in range -- looks like something that is coming together. We may still have to fiddle with the menus -- there won't be a 'present and available' switch to satisfy Ray -- but we are getting closer, slowly, to a seamless integration of telephony and instant messaging. Although the stupid phones companies have blown the obvious advantages they had, and are leaving it open for the Vonages and Microsofts of the world to take it all over.