According to Rick Moran at Cisco Presence is near the number one priority. In a caption from Rick’s blog via IT EXPO he mentions, “The application and the network need to work together better and it doesn’t make sense that cell phones ring at 3:00 am local time when you travel as the phone and network realize what time it is.”

This is an excellent example of the use of Presence. If the phone knows what time it is (which it does) then why is is ringing at 3AM ? Better yet why doesn;t the network immediately respond with an automated call or SMS back to the caller informing them that “Hey caller, it’s 3AM, send me an email @ and I will get back to you at a sane time.” Presence can play a huge part in the enterprise. It would be very beneficial for team members to understand what environment or what the status is of other members without having to do anything more than look at their phone or messenger. This way they would know that an instant message is not going to cut it, or maybe it would be very timely to send some critical business info to that team member during that meeting.

We have seen Presence in action via proprietary personal Instant Messagers for years; Yahoo, Skype, AIM, ICQ, MSN and there are others. Google has in some ways broken the proprietary chain with the introduction of GoogleTalk IM using XMPP for Presence and IM. I have been preaching open standards in VoIP, IM and Presence for a lifetime it seems and I am glad to see Google has gone in this direction. But did Google choose the right protocol/technology? Could SIMPLE and XCAP serve them better? It seems as though Google wants to support both SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP.

Here is what Robert Sparks – organizer of SIPit had to say about Presence during a brief conversation I had with him today. “The general opinion still seems to be that XMPP is good for right now for medium sized solutions. When people start looking at large portals and interdomain, they start looking at SIMPLE. You have seen folks like Nokia making more noise about OMA, PoC, and related things? Those tout SIMPLE pretty strongly.” Robert is also the author of SIP Beyond VoIP. Chapters 5, 8 and 15 talk why someone might want to deploy SIMPLE, including the new possibilities it uniquely brings to the market. It’s a great read, check it out.

Tags: Presence, IM, XMPP, SIP, VoIP

Chris Pirillo and I spoke today on the MSN/Yahoo federation and why AOL has potentially missed the boat. We had a brief conversation on Eyeball’s new IM product as a Trillium replacement. The new iPod made it into the conversation with Chris telling Apple exactly where they can shove their current pay-for velcro arm straps among other things. We talked about the impact that Video Blogging will have now that this product is out there, according to Chris, not a hell of a lot.

The MP3: http://sipthat.com/mp3/Pirillo-gadaBe-10-12-2005-8.19.19PM.mp3

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We saved the best for last… Chris’s own Gada.be service.

I happen to think that Chris is on to something here, gada.be is essentially a Search Conduit for RSS which was initially built for mobile apps (Smartphones and PSP) but has mass appeal. I use it regularly now to search for VoIP news in the morning as part of my wake-up ritual. http://voip.gada.be/. It rocks for current news research, check it!

Don’t forget to sign on to Chris’s weekly podcast tomorrow eve: http://thechrispirilloshow.com

fyi, until I figure out how to get my new home completely dialed with iTunes podcasting and iron out a few technical issues I will be double posting there and here.

I have recently moved my blog to TMC for many good reasons and too many to list 😉

You can find my new home online here:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/sipthat/

See you there.

In an effort to build the world’s best IM client Eyeball Networks is reaching out to technically savvy end-users.

Those of you who are sick to death of Instant Messenger products which are not interoperable and do not support open standards will be very happy to know that this soft client was conceived to be the one and only messaging and communications end point you will need.

Take part in Eyeball’s exclusive IM beta testing and review program. This new IP Communications client comes with fully integrated voice, video and instant messaging. Supporting; SIP, XMPP, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, high quality voice with wide-band audio codecs, plus real-time video by way of H.263, H.264 and our own EyeStream video codecs.

Help Eyeball test the best built IM client out there. To participate in the Eyeball IM beta, send your request to rsc AT eyeball.com with the following information:

[Name]
[Phone]
[Primary email]
[Organization]
[IM id’s]

[Background – 250 words maximum ]

Those selected will also receive an Eyeball T-shirt!

See you in the beta forum!