A recent piece in NewScientist.com that automatically captions photos based on what you and your friends say about them in online chat.
"Digital photography is booming, and people are storing ever greater volumes of photos on the hard drives of their PCs. The trouble is that people rarely label their photos.Immediately you see the possibilities outside of photo captions: any sort of group review would be immensely improved by automatic capture of salient commentary."This is the weak link for digital photo collections," says Margaret Fleck at HP's lab in Palo Alto. "In 10 years' time, finding something amongst them will be very difficult."
Fleck's answer is to tap into the wealth of information in the conversations we have when we talk about our photos with friends. She says the stories we tell do not merely describe the photo, but also talk about the events that happened before and after the picture was taken.
To harness this information, Fleck has developed software that records these conversations to hard disc, converts the speech to text using a speech-recognition program, and then extracts keywords with which the photos are captioned and indexed."
I have been on the trail of an 'assistantbot' that I know someone told me about a few years ago. This bot would attend chat meetings and capture action items, and them post an email to the attendees afterward. I want that. Anyone know who built it, or talked about it?
I saw in TidBITS that iChat is adding MSN support, at least in a beta form:
"Apple today released a public beta of iChat AV 2.2, the company's popular instant-messaging and audio/video conferencing application. In addition to providing a handful of bug fixes, the update incorporates support for Microsoft's MSN text messaging network."The pound of flesh? Environmental Marketing:
"In a deal worked out between Apple and Microsoft, chat sessions between iChat and MSN clients will include "short, targeted, and relevant" promotional messages within text chats; the text appears in the same gray, sans-serif text used to display timestamps and other system messages (such as "Direct Instant Message session started")."Ugh. But someone's got to pay the piper.
A recent piece in New Scientist digs into the drivers and headaches around spim -- instant messaging spam:
"The volume of so-called "spim" is set [to] triple in 2004, according to a new report from the Radicati Group, a technology market research firm in Palo Alto, California.Yikes.The company projects that 1.2 billion spims will be sent, 70 per cent of which are porn-related. This is a mere trickle compared to the 35 billion spams expected, but the researchers warn that spim is growing at about three times the rate of spam, as spammers adapt their toolkit to exploit a rapidly rising number of new instant messaging (IM) users."
A great reason to tighten the controls that IM already offers us. This is also a great argument for enterprises to bring on instant messaging management offerings from firms like IMlogic, Facetime, Akonix, and ZoneLabs, that will block spim before it gets to your IM client.
This does not necessarily block pornbots encountered in public chat rooms, however:
"Another spimming tool is even more stealthy. Spimmers deploy bots in chatrooms that pose as people and persuade other chatters to invite them on to their buddy lists. In a crowded chatroom, an invitation can be solicited with a fairly rudimentary impersonation, says Stowe Boyd of the technology consulting firm A Working Model in Virginia."
Time Warner is apparently considering a spin-out, sale, or reorganization of AOL, according to CNN.com [quoting a New York Post story I can't find].
The company has lost 2.2M customers in 2003, and you have to expect the rest of the high-priced narrowband ISP business to collapse over time; however,
"the unit has continued to produce profits though, posting operating income of $663 million and earnings before depreciation and amortization of $1.5 billion in 2003. Its revenue of $8.6 billion, while off 5 percent from 2002 levels, was the second largest contributor to company revenues after its filmed entertainment unit, which had a record year."Planning to sell while the numbers look good, I guess.
The company still has not figured out how to exploit the huge opportunity it has with its instant messaging network, AIM. While continuing to host 100+M users, AOL doesn't seem to know how to tap into what these folks want to do, aside from looking at ads and perhaps dating (at Love.com). I continue to be amazed at the conservatism of AOL in the IM market.
Who knows? A spin-out, sale, or re-org might clear out the cobwebs, and shake things up creatively or strategically. In the meantime, its business as usual: meaning, no real attack on the business opportunties within real-time communication by AOL.
A recent Game Over column by Chris Morris builds up the possibility that Nintendo may be planning to include IM functionality in the upcoming Nintendo DS product:
"In an analyst report issued Tuesday, P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research said the upcoming Nintendo DS will offer Instant Messaging functionality. Rather than being offered nationally, though, the DS is more likely to offer local IM service, using free bandwidth with unlicensed RF spectrum (essentially, the same bandwidth that's used by two-way communication devices). Users would type messages on a touch screen using a stylus."Sounds like they plan to allow IM among gamers in close physical proximity -- the range of walkie-talkies -- as opposed to starting their own international IM network.
However, once you have implemented any sort of IM client, you could later on extend it -- either with a new public IM network, or through partnerships with other existing networks -- to provide universal access.
Of course, with so many rumors swirling around about the Nintendo DS -- multimedia capabilities (movies played from flashcards), wireless gaming (what exactly do they mean?) -- its hard to know where the speculation ends and hard facts begin.
A slashdot pointer brought me to an interesting application of an IRC bot called PieSpy, which maps social networks in IRC chatspace. But its been used to analyze social networks in Shakespeare's plays. Neat.
Looks like Yahoo is pushing into internet telephony integration with Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo and British Telecom are planning to offer voice messenger services in the UK via Yahoo Messenger, the companies announced this week. The product will be called Yahoo Messenger with BT Communicator [that's a mouthfull of contending brands]. Limited trials start in May and will roll out later this year. It will be an Internet telephony service, using VoIP.
Looks like Yahoo is waking up to the value prop of being able to connect to all those folks out there with telephones, from your desktop IM client. Now if only AOL and MSN similarly connect, and if telephone users will be able to connect to desktop IM users via VoIP, we will have sneaked into interoperability through voice telephony shenanigans.
There is a widely reported, but not clearly virulent IM worm infecting ICQ, called Bizex. The supposition is that the work is burrowing for financial information. Kaspersky Labs issued a warning, saying as many as 50,000 PCs had been infected. Symantec stated that far fewer infected PCs had been reported: 5.
The simple solution is to not click on any unknown or unfamiliar links sent to you in ICQ, especially anything to do with "jokeworld," a webist that was shut down only a few hours after the worm was discovered.
In a recent PCWorld piece, I learned about a new instant messaging system designed specifically for online gamers: Xfire. The technology has only been in beta for a month, and already has 60,000 users.
I had known that some gamers use IM frequently, while other turn it off to avoid IMs popping up during play. I hadn't thought about the impact of IM on the style of game play:
""People are anonymous on most game servers and because of that they can act really arrogantly, especially to players they don't think are up to their level," he [CTO of Xfire, Fong] says. "That can really kill the fun.""But when you know a few people in the game, the tone really changes," he adds. "It becomes much more social, and it's actually a nicer environment for the strangers who are there with you. Everyone is much more civilized.""
I also took a peek at the features of Xfire, and discovered a number of cool advances, unmentioned by the PCWorld piece.
Xfire supports some game-related presence and availability information (see picture above), so that the buddy list of your gaming pals includes the games they are playing, and the ability to join them in those games by simply clicking on the 'join' button.
There is also an elusive hint of social software here, as well, with the 'friend of friends' group on the buddy list: I want this feature added to all other IM systems, immediately! (With appropriate privacy toggles, of course.)
I recently received the following email from Convoq:
"Dear ASAP Beta User, [that's me!]As I recently mentioned, I think the ideas motivating ASAP (As Soon As Present) are very cool. Aside from the network effect (the utility of the tool is only so good as the number of people that are actively able to use it) the pricing/seat model looks very attractive, when compared with competitive web conferencing solutions.On behalf of all of us at Convoq, I want to thank you for your participation in our ASAP Beta testing program. Because of your support and feedback, version 1.0 of ASAP has entered the marketplace as a more robust and feature-rich product. Your suggestions have ensured that ASAP can effectively compete as the industry’s first personal Web conferencing tool.
In case you hadn’t heard, ASAP was officially announced and released on February 16, 2004. We are very excited about the launch and look forward to extending our user base. Since this means that we have reached the end of the Beta testing program, we would like to convert your account from Beta user to ASAP licensed customer. This is a simple process; you just need to decide whether you want ASAP Standard (which allows you to convene unlimited 5-person meetings for $49.95 per year) or ASAP Professional (which allows unlimited meetings of up to 25 people for $99.95 per year) and provide us with payment information. For more information on pricing, visit the Product section of the Convoq Web site (www.convoq.com).
To convert your account, please contact our Sales department at 781-676-6800 or reply to this e-mail. On February 25, 2004, we will be canceling all Beta accounts that have not been converted to either ASAP Standard or ASAP Professional licenses, so please act soon.
Again, we thank you for your support of ASAP during its formative period and hope that you will continue as a member of the Convoq family.
Sincerely,
David MacKenzie, Director of Inside Sales
Convoq, Inc.
781-676-6800 (phone)
781-862-2800 (fax)
sales@convoq.com"
I tracked down the website of BuddyLinks, the service involved in the AIM "Osama Found" adware mess (see Buddylinks Trickery = IM Adware):
"BuddyLinks, a division of PSD Tools, was founded in 2003. Our aim is to bring people on the Web closer together with our patent-pending technology. Using future releases of BuddyLinks, users will be able harness our software to automatically transmit information -- whether it be job openings, party invitations, jokes or potential dates -- to their entire network of instant messaging buddies, all with just the click of a button. BuddyLinks brings together the best aspects of P2P apps, Social Networking software, and Instant Messaging to form a single, powerful tool.Hmmm. Why is it that the words they say doesn't seem to gibe with the mess they have stirred up?Our mission is to entertain Web users with games and news by tapping into the natural social networks that their IM buddy groups form. We also understand that our compelling content is central to our success. That's what makes BuddyLinks unique, and we hope you and your friends enjoy the breath of fresh air BuddyLinks represents for the Web.
If you need to contact us, please feel free to email us at support@buddylinks.net or snail mail us here:
BuddyLinks
1770 Mass. Ave. #213
Cambridge, MA
02140-2808"
An interesting piece at Internet.com about advertising in desktop apps. The data around IM clients shows why the IM networks are resisting interoperability: The war for ad eyeballs.
"Messaging Through MessengersSo long as the financial model of the services is based on free access subsidized by advertising, we will not get to a universal instant messaging infrastructure. Imagine free telephone service, so long as you had to listen to ads and could only call other users of the same service.Instant messaging services include AOL Instant Messenger, with 20 percent, MSN Messenger Service at 19 percent and Yahoo! Messenger Service, with 12 percent of the active user base.
"People who use IM (Instant Messenger) do so throughout the day," said Derick Mains, an AOL spokesperson. "According to Comscore, over 50 million independent users are on AOL instant messaging products every month. It's prominent real estate, definitely.
"The Buddy Video is the little ad that runs on the top of your buddy list," said Mains. "Now, for the first time, AOL has been selling it as a video opportunity. Movie companies can repurpose their TV ads and run them in the space." Instead of seeing a static, two-dimensional ad, users see a streaming video ad with audio at the top of the buddy list, timed to appear only a couple of times in a 24-hour cycle. The new format is still being tested.
"In December, when we introduced it, we did a pilot and it sold immediately. Major advertisers loved it. Your buddy list is up all day, so it's un-missable. There are no other ads on the desktop, while on a Web site there could be several other competing ads," Mains noted."
A ZDNet piece digs into the recent AIM adware ploy by BuddyLinks. One aspect of the trickery employed is a bogus news story about Bin Laden getting captured:
"The application sends an IM to every person on an America Online user's buddy list and includes a link to a fake TV news Web site. A dialog box then asks if the user wants to install a "news player." However, the program instead plays a simple animated game, reconfigures AOL's instant messenger to receive advertising and once again sends a link to the fake news Web site to everyone on the new victim's buddy list."AOL is considering legal action against BuddyLinks and the parent company, PSD Tools. So be cautious of IM's announcing Bin Laden's capture. The software is easy to uninstall, but you may wind up sending the adware along to all your buddies.
Apple iChat AV 2.1 now supports video conferencing with users of AIM 5.5. This opens up a wider world for Mac OS users of iChat, but does not reach users of other networks, like MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber.
Someday...
AgileMobile.com has announced availability of AgileMessenger. a mobile instant messaging gateway that allows users to login to Yahoo, AOL, ICQ, and MSN at the same time. The download is free , and is now available for Symbian OS compatible phones, including Nokia 7650 / 3650 / 6600 / N-Gage, Sony Ericsson P800 / P900, and Siemens SX1, and MS Windows Smartphones.
In an article at GMToday of all places, I found some interesting stats re: teen use of IM:
"According to research conducted by AOL (America Online) about 93 percent of 13-to-17-year-olds use some kind of Internet instant messaging system, and 73 percent say they use instant messaging more than e-mail."Email is dying, and the teenagers won't mourn it.
...
"Also according to AOL’s research, when given a choice between television, telephone, instant messaging and radio, and told they could have access to only one form of communication for a month, 41 percent of teens chose television, 33 percent chose instant messaging and just 17 percent chose the telephone."
T-Mobile announced adopting OZ technology for mobile instant messaging:
"T-Mobile USA has officially adopted OZ Communications' Mobile IM Gateway to enable wireless instant messaging on mobile devices. The Gateway is already deployed and in use by T-Mobile subscribers across the USA.A new generation of IM-capable mobile phones operate on the Open Mobile Alliance specifications for Instant Messaging and Presence Services (IMPS), which was once knokwn as Wireless Village, meaning T-Mobile's operation will be standards-based around a single interface."
Love.com released results of a survey about online dating, finding that 1 in 10 unmarried adults have tried online dating sites:
"The survey also found that men and women not only use the Internet to flirt and chat with other singles, but to search for prospective dates. In fact, one in ten single adults who have Internet access have conducted an online search for someone before they have gone out with that person. Some good news for those who are searching for that special someone: 88% of those surveyed say they do not lie when describing themselves in their profile with 6% saying they only used a few white lies."Some of the other findings:
"-- Far more men admit to Internet flirting than women (31% for men versus 15% for women).-- More than one in ten single adults with Internet access (12%) say they flirt with others by instant messaging or e-mail during the day.
-- Sixteen percent of men say they flirt online during the day, compared with 8% of women.
-- Flirting via e-mail or instant messaging is also much higher among those 18-24 years (33%) than those who are older (19%).
-- About one in ten unmarried adults with Internet access (9%) customize their instant messages and/or e-mails with colorful wallpaper or icons so they are more flirty. Fourteen percent of 18-24 year olds do so, compared with 7% of older adults.
-- Nearly one in ten unmarried adults with Internet access (9%) have asked someone out by instant messaging them. Men are far more likely than women to have done this (14% vs. 4%).
-- Those who ask someone out via instant messaging spend an average of four weeks flirting online before asking to meet them offline for a date.
-- Thirteen percent of single adults who have Internet access have entered an online chat room for dating.
Other findings
Searching for love...
-- One in ten have conducted an online search for someone before they have gone out on a date. Twelve percent of men have done so versus 8% of women.
-- About one in four of those who have tried an online dating service (24%) say they instant messaged or e-mailed other people's profiles around to their friends to get their opinion of prospective dates; 8% say they always did this, while 16% say they sometimes did.
-- Most of those who have used an online dating service (82%) say it took them about an hour or less to write their online profile; 52% wrote it in about 20 minutes.
-- Men are far more likely than women to have visited dating chat rooms (18% vs. 7%).
...even in the wrong places...
-- Nearly half of those who have tried an online dating service (44%) have come across an online profile of someone they know, such as an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, when they were surfing through profiles.
-- One in three of those who have tried an online dating service work in an office where they are supervised by a manager. Of these, 10% say they have been caught by their boss or manager while surfing or responding to online profiles.
-- Most of those who have used an online dating service (66%) check their online dating account once a day for new messages; 10% check it once in the morning and once in the evening, while 9% check it three times a day and 2% admit to checking it "constantly."
...and finding it.
-- Five percent of unmarried adults with Internet access have fallen in love with someone they met online. Men are more likely to have experienced this than women (7% vs. 3%)."
According to Credit Cards Magazine, there has been a big uptake in the use of credit cards in Eastern Europe, and to seom extent that has been led by the use of SMS text messaging to counter rampant credit card identity theft:"The biggest obstacle that credit card marketers had to overcome in Hungary was fear of fraud. But consumer concerns about the safety of their cards has led to an important security innovation made possible by the explosive growth of mobile phones in Hungary.
Each time a card is used, the cardholder immediately receives a text message on his cell phone confirming the transaction and advising him of his balance. Initially developed in Hungary, the messaging system is widely used in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is now being introduced to countries in Western Europe."I wish they would set this up here.
[pointer from Gizmodo]
Recent research by Ferris reported suggests that while instant messaging spam, or spim, is rising, it is still inconsequential.
"Officials at America Online, which runs the popular Instant Messenger service, and Microsoft, which runs MSN Messenger, say they've seen an increase in the amount of IM spam. Messaging and collaboration research firm Ferris Research estimates that the quantity of such solicitations doubled from 2002 to 2003, reaching 500 million last year. That's fast growth, though it's nothing compared with the 800 billion pieces of E-mail spam caught by just one anti-spam provider, Brightmail Inc., in 2003. Ferris Research president David Ferris dismisses the phenomenon. "Let's say there are 200 million IM users at the moment. So 500 million is just one every three or four months. It's just trivial."Still primarily a phenomenon that arises from use of public chatrooms, where pornbots lurk for the unwary, spim will be a future hazard: when interoperability between the public IM networks lowers the costs and barriers to spimming.
Thomas Claburn writes in InformationWeek about spim, and includes one of my thoughts about the paradoxical benefits of public IM network non-interoperability:
"Boyd also doubts that spim will ever wreak the havoc of spam. One reason is the fragmented nature of the IM networks--an AOL IM user can't talk with an MSN Messenger or Yahoo IM user. That's been a criticism of IM, but it's likely to inhibit the growth of spim. "Because the major instant-messaging networks have not worked toward any kind of public interoperability structure," he says, "it's extremely difficult to create a uniform mechanism to spim on all the networks."
But it's not impossible. Those running the IM networks are discussing greater interoperability. That could be just the incentive spimmers need."
MessageVine, a leading provider of messaging and presence solutions and InphoMatch, a leading provider of global inter-carrier wireless data solutions, announced today a strategic partnership to bring a fully interoperable mobile IM solution to market.
Under this agreement, InphoMatch will host and resell MessageVine presence and instant messaging solutions, based on the MessageVine IM Interlink Server. MessageVine's solution provides carriers with a uniquely integrated platform for mobile IM, including full interoperability with established PC instant messaging networks, so the carrier retains total carrier control of billing processes, user experience and quality of service.
In my research in the mobile IM sector, I have learned that carriers -- many of whom initially signed up with the vendors of the major IM services -- are moving aggressively to bring control of the IM technology in house. However, they are still eager to provide access to the public IM networks, meaning a fully interoperable solution is most attractive. That switch has fueled the growth of companies like MessageVine, who, in particular, has grown very quickly by meeting that market need.
I saw in a CNN.com article that Google is planning to roll out its own email service, to compete with Microsoft, Yahoo, and others.
"Google already knows how to deliver its sponsored link ads -- which are in the form of Web links and appear on the perimeter of Web pages -- to e-mail newsletters and content sites.Apparently, they may differentiate themeselves based on better spam protection.Furthermore, Google last year purchased an e-mail management software maker and in 2001 registered the domain name googlemail.com."
I bet they will launch their own instant messaging solution, too. Its the second most used Internet app, and in some demographics (teenagers) its number one.
A new entrant to the MSN Direct-based watch market, Suunto, a Finnish company well-known for diving timepieces and high-end sports watches, has released the N3, as reported by AP:
"The service, available in 100 metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada, is free for the first month and $9.95 a month thereafter (or $59 annually).What's the point of having MSN Messenger if you can't respond? They should at least allow you to predefine a list of responses on the website, and then select from a pull-down list. This seems to be a limitation of the MSN Wrist Net service, not the N3, since the offerings from Fossil and Abacus share this limitation.The plastic timepiece works by picking up a special FM radio signal. Reception was strong where I live in Dallas, but based on Microsoft's coverage map, I'd be out of range if I visited President Bush's ranch in Crawford, about 100 miles to the southwest.
What's missing? Content. There's no real-time sports scores, although ESPN is expected to fill that void soon.
Another drawback is that you can receive instant messages sent with MSN Messenger, but you can't respond."
Emily Nussbaum's recent NY Times magazine piece, My So-Called Blog, explores the ways that kids -- highschoolers -- are using new media, like blogs and instant messaging -- to socialize.
"Peer into an online journal, and you find the operatic texture of teenage life with its fits of romantic misery, quick-change moods and sardonic inside jokes. Gossip spreads like poison. Diary writers compete for attention, then fret when they get it. And everything parents fear is true. (For one thing, their children view them as stupid and insane, with terrible musical taste.) But the linked journals also form a community, an intriguing, unchecked experiment in silent group therapy -- a hive mind in which everyone commiserates about how it feels to be an outsider, in perfect choral unison."I think "hive mind' really captures the emergent quality of blog networks. Despite its treatment of gossip and the potential for flaming in blogland, this piece is a great counter to the wave of stories recently suggesting that IM and blog use are inevitably negative force in children's lives. A must read.
Steve Gillmor's Best and Worst of Messaging & Collaboration in '03 includes a shot at AOL re: lack of interoperability in "public" instant messaging networks:
"Lack of IM interoperability -- AOL and Time Warner get an Oscar for agreeing to stay out of IM video in return for keeping their buddy lists locked up. Post-bubble, Time Warner drops the AOL name, gets $780 million from Microsoft, can do video-conferencing anyway, and still no interoperability. And the winner is: not us."
ZDNet UK reports that Internet users are increasing bypassing the browser as they use apps to access the Internet.
"The most popular application in December was Windows Media Player, reaching 34 percent of Internet users; AOL Instant Messenger, reaching 20.27 percent; RealNetworks' players, reaching 19.76 percent; MSN Messenger, reaching 19.31 percent; and Yahoo Messenger, reaching 12.26 percent."
I spoke with Jennifer Saranow of the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, about SPIM -- instant messaging spam. Her piece -- "Angry Over Spam? Get Set for Spim" -- was in the WSJ this morning:
"Ferris Research estimates about 500 million instant-messenger spams were sent in 2003, double the number sent in 2002. That is a blip compared with the estimated two billion e-mail spams sent each day, but instant-messenger spam's fast growth has some spam watchers concerned. And messaging companies are ramping up to fight the new annoyance."
I thought it would be fun to dig up what I think is the earliest use of the term. Here's something from July 1 2002 from Instant Messaging Planet:
" Don't SPIM -- don't use IM as spam. Setting up a 'bot-based or alert-based service that pushes information is fine. But it is evil to pounce on the unsuspecting and put the hard sell on them. (Stowe Boyd)"Definitely something we will be seeing more of.
Jabber and Followap recently completed a series of interoperability tests, which have led to an interoperable service in France.
"The service will enable the majority of France's mobile subscribers to communicate with each other through richer presence-based media, such as instant messaging, MMS and dynamic address books, according to Jabber's acting president Tony Barmonti."Interoperability and extensibility are increasingly the mantras of wireless operators worldwide," Cutter Consortium analyst Stowe Boyd says. Recent research from In-Stat/MDR, a Wireless Week sister company, indicates there will be more than 2 billion wireless subscribers worldwide by 2007.
In July, Followap announced Vodafone Group plc named it the sole provider of Vodafone's instant messaging platform. The deal called for Followap to deliver its iFollow suite of products to Vodafone operators."
WSJ article on Match.com's push beyond dating into social software:
"Users of Match.com now can opt to set up a "friends profile" in addition to their dating profiles. The friends profiles are searched separately from dating profiles.
Users can also chose to invite up to 50 acquaintances to become part of their Match.com community of friends. Those people get linked, so that users can see who each other's friends are."
Note: I hadn't looked at Match.com earlier, because I am not -- per se -- interested in dating sites. However, I was intrigued to see that Match.com supports an instant messaging system, Match.com Messenger (not to be confused with Match Messenger, which is a Jabber-based service), but I was surprised that it doesn't interoperate with any of the public networks. They also use MSN alerts as a means to notify you of "winks" that others send you when you aren't logged into Match.com.
I finally was able to connect with Matt Smith regarding the status at Presenceworks, a company that pioneered the notion of embedding presence from the public networks into applications. Presenceworks is the first company to have an AIM business partner relationship in place, but the company has changed its plans. In response to questions about the company's future, Smith said, "PresenceWorks has trimmed to down to skeleton staff, who are overseeing a possible IP sale, and we are not actively selling product on the street."
It seems like a strange twist of fate, since the IM market continues to explode, and interest in presence-enabling applications is growing. Perhaps the reality is that -- while Smith & Co made the right bet on presence technology -- the company was too early relative to enterprise adoption of instant messaging. All indications are that 2004 will be a banner year for enterprise uptake of IM, so Presenceworks could be an attractive acquisition for other software groups trying to make a play in this market.
Smith is now working at AOL, in a group working on licensing presence. His brother and business partner, Paul Smith (recently back from Thailand), is overseeing IP sale opportunities.
I got an email from AOL touting the Love.com dating service. This is strange because
IN a bid to stem losses from its core telephony business, China Telecom has announced that it will launch its own IM network, with software to support text messaging, voice-over-IP, and web conferencing. The current market leader in China's IM market is QQ, developed by Tensent. The number of IM users is supposed to be close the the total number of telephone users, according to China.org.cn.
Userplane's CEO, Michael Jones has zoomed in on the freaky/risque elements of AOL's new Love.com online dating service.
"While superficially similar to other online dating sites, Love.com is definitely more risque than most, especially with search options that enable users to search for dating 'couples,'" Jones said. "Match.com and most of the other leading dating sites are focused on singles dating. By releasing 'couples' searching, AOL is pursuing a somewhat risky path, especially considering the profile of the typical AOL user."
Michael is covering old ground here. I recall the furor over Friendster's profile status selection which included "open marriage" as an option. The reality is that online dating -- the most public and sucessful manifestation of social networking tools -- is all about sex (and to a lesser extent, the search for a life partner). Wringing our hands about it when the services give users a broad enough range of options to actually find what they are looking for is pointless.
The consolidation of the online dating sites is inevitable -- its the eBay effect -- buyers and sellers are both benefitted by there being an enormous single market. In the dating context, the same holds. If AOL's entry accelerates that trend, the online daters will be benefitted, not harmed.
Judith Meskill Judith Meskill turned me on to Pepper Computer's newly announced Pepper Keeper, a consumer oriented collaboration system that leverages instant messaging.
The collaborative metaphor is shared albums in which pages can hold various sorts of information, such as photos, MP3 files, homework, and whatever.
Collaboration is based on IM. I could pass along my photo album to an AIM buddy, who would them be able to see the photos in his own photo album. The tool automatically imports your AIM buddy list into its Buddy album, and you can annotate the buddy info with email addresses, photos, and so on (but it doesn't try to jibe this info with Outlook, which would have been a nice shortcut). Pepper Keeper also has a local IM network for Pepper users in a shared LAN.
The company's pricing approach is interesting. The dowload of Pepper Keeper is free (currently), and that initial dowload includes a few sample applications. However, with the exception of the MP3 album, all the other albums provided has a limited number of pages. Once these are used, you must return to the online store to download more pages.
At the moment I wonder if the IM-based collaboration provided is rich enough to warrant paying the price for the pages. Paying $4.99 for 25 photos in a sharable album is steep, when I can post them for free at a blog (like www.textamerica.com). I think the company will have to drastically drop prices -- like 250 pages for $4.99 -- if it is going to make it.
A fusion of digital photo sharing and IM, Picasa Hello is a free IM service designed around sharing photos.
The central idea is a 'film strip' -- a series of photos that have been displayed through interaction with others in the Hello network. Individual phots can be saved, as well as a folder of photos representing the current film strip.
Along with photo sharing and chat, there is a flavor of social networking in the product, through the 'introduce friend' feature. I presume that this is oriented toward dating.
Hello looks like a great way to share holiday photos with relatives far away. Picasa is offering a 15 day trial of the same-named Picasa digital image manager as well, which can be used in an integrated fashion with Hello.
I was recently walked through the Macromedia Central product. Central is part of the company's push for "information convenience" which translates in part to an application framework for Macromedia Flash apps to run outside the browser.
Central runs as a free Windows client which appears as a vertical "portal" for Central applications. In the version I am running (see graphic to the right) there are two apps shown: Movie Finder, and BlogReader.
At the top is a region for alerts that can be posted by any of the applications -- in this case, I have an alert from a third app, not shown, AccuWeather. This shared alert region can reduce screen clutter, since all manner of alerts could be consolidated there. The "pods" in the panel can be expanded into more complex interfaces -- for example, the BlogReader app expands into a relatively full-featured blog reader, using RSS feeds, and the Movie Finder does what you would expect, providing a means to search for movie times based on zip code, etc.
Macromedia and AOL recently announced that an upcoming version of the Central SDK will include hooks that will allow Central app developers to take advantage of the AIM network to real-time enable their apps. This means that presence and IM capabilities will quickly be incorporated into future applications. For example, an initial prototype of a presence-enabled blog reader has been developed (although I have not seen it) which posts the AIM presence and availability of blog authors. I would personally like to have all my IM alerts managed in an alert region, like that provided by Central, so I hope that the AIM integration leads to services of that sort.
I have only recently become aware of the sophistication of the Macromedia Flash Communication server (see UserPlane A/V Instant Communicator), but with advances like Central, Macromedia Breeze (the company's web conferencing offering) and now the integration with AIM, it looks like Macromedia is quietly positioning itself to compete with IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle in the battle for the next generation enterprise application platform of choice. Stay tuned.
AOL has revised their longstanding policy re: AIM multiple login. Formerly, attempting a second login to the system, for example, from a PDA while already logged in on a PC, would lead to the first client being disconnected.
The capability to login on multiple devices offers benefits, such as concurrent support of mobile and stationary devices. Note that when you login multiple locations, all messages will be sent to all clients unless you set the 'Away' flag, as described at an AOL web page.
Multiple login is supported by other IM systems -- like Jabber -- that have a long history with telephony and related mobility solutions. This policy changes demonstrates that AOL has finally accepted the new world of mobility.
Read Jon Udell's piece: iChat AV, iSight, and FlashCom. I am happy that iChat AV -- audio visual services linked to the iChat network -- seems to work as advertised. But Apple doesn't solve the interoperability problem any better that AOL, Yahoo, or MSN.
I want to be able to chat (with or without video and voice) to anyone with an IP address on the Internet.
Leaving my tired diatribe aside, I am planning to get a webcam when I get back from the beach, and to launch Stowe TV!
I stumbled across the new (I think) Wall Street Journal bot at www.wsj.com. Pretty cool. I have been using the bot (which looks like ActiveBuddy to me) to keep track of Starbucks rise in the past week (one of my few smart investments in recetn years).
If you're an AIM user, simply start an IM with WSJOnline. The rest is obvious.
