Instant Messaging & Presence

Marc Eisenstadt, Stuart Watt

Knowledge Media Institute

OU Learning & Teaching Innovation Committeee

6th February, 2002

What Do These Have in Common?

• Hotmail

• ICQ +

AIM

• Napster+Morpheus+

84 million active accounts84 million active accounts

70 million registered users70 million registered users

61 million registered users61 million registered users

65 million downloads since fall 65 million downloads since fall 19991999

...The fastest-growing apps in ...The fastest-growing apps in history!history!

What Else in Common?

Person-to-person asynchronous Person-to-person asynchronous messagingmessaging

Person-to-person real-time messagingPerson-to-person real-time messaging

Person-to-person real-time messagingPerson-to-person real-time messaging

Person-to-person file sharingPerson-to-person file sharing

People are the keyPeople are the key

Peer-to-peerPeer-to-peer

Peer-to-peerPeer-to-peer

Peer-to-peerPeer-to-peer

Peer-to-peerPeer-to-peer

• Hotmail

• ICQ +

AIM

• Napster+Morpheus+

Typical IM session

Not the same as chat

FirstClass chat

Presence‘radar alert’

Many varieties; similar concepts

• ICQ

• AOL Instant Messenger

• Yahoo! Messenger

• MSN Messenger

• Odigo

• Trillium

• Jabber (open source, XML-based)

Key insights

• We can harness wild popularity (people use it anyway, but big outfits have own solutions)

• ‘Always on’ is not required: just assume ‘improved access’ (e.g. flat-rate phone charges)

• Accept inter-operability

• Encourage ‘enhanced presence management’ (e.g. lightweight ‘radar’)

BuddySpace

• KMi’s current experiment in presence management

• Partly EPSRC-funded (begins May 2002)

• Automatic map construction to show locations

• Automatic roster construction using OU’s LDAP and SAMS authentication… so it knows which workgroup or tutorial group I’m in

• Many views: map, timelines, etc.

Plain chat

Embeddedbrowser for custom ‘newsflashes’ etc.

Automatic rosterconstructionduring login =personal tutorgroup, work groupetc.

Typical view ofOU tutorial group

Automatic rosterconstructionduring login =personal tutorgroup, work groupetc.

Automatic mapconstructionfrom user data

Smart inset chosen,depending onactual data

Map & faces arecustomised; dotsdisplay true status

Floorplan of KMi;Dots are those ofinterest to me

OU campus map

World, Europe,KMi floorplanall together

Timeline view, e.g. which TMA?

What next?

• Several course teams already expressing interest

• An ‘agnostic’ client can be built (emphasises the ‘popup radar’/dashboard aspect, then chat takes place using FirstClass, MSN Messenger, etc.)

• Worth OU investment

• Trials needed