Library clips

DailyMe is an RSS Reader where you choose from feeds (topics, filter by keyword) or add your own, and set your delivery as: web version, scheduled email with PDF attachment, mobile text email, scheduled printed personalised newspaper. Coming soon are multiple editions and various customised newspaper layout.
mashable mention they have social network type interaction like: posting comments, blogging content, sharing your profile.

Again and again I have talked about a daily RSS Newspaper, but it hasn’t engaged discussion, perhaps DailyMe will be a way to print your own newspaper the way I have envisioned.

The only catch is that blog content usually points to links, so there has to be a way for DailyMe to scrape links and add them as footers at the end of the article.

We are able to filter stories, but what about filtering within your feedset (instead of seeing every story from every feed, or at least reading every story by tag topics).
I like the backend work of MyFeedz, the way it filters stories by tag (not keyword), and it will also memetrack or cluster similar stories, I can’t remember if these stories with lots of clustered items rise to the top as they are most popular. If so, in a newspaper, these would be the bigger editorials.
I guess you could even rank feeds, as an alternate setting, in addition to most popular stories in general, you could have preference to see popular stories from a selection of feeds, even if they are not popular as some stories from other feeds.

And as I’ve mentioned before, the newspaper could be sectioned by tags, or perhaps sections could be based on a different set of feeds.

In the future I envision a DailyUs, a newspaper you could make to distribute…there would perhaps be issues with licensing content and advertising royalties.

But I guess all feeds in the directory could be paid, and if their articles are part of a distributed newspaper they get royalties…advertising could be contextually generated, and advertisers pay DailyUs to be included.

The advertising is easier enough, as advertisers pay upfront, but what about feed publishers, an online edition is OK as you read the summary and link back to their site, just like search engine results…in fact lots of RSS remixing sites allow you to collate full-text content from various feeds into the one page.

In the print world, if you print a full-text newspaper and distribute (non-personal use), then these feed sources need to get paid, and DailyUs couldn’t measure this by clicks.

Layout

As I mentioned you can get email delivery, which is a list of headlines and summaries.

The PDF is similar only the stories are in columns and it seems a few are full-text…the stories are sectioned by feed name or topic.

The web version is also in columns, and the stories are summaries, some in boxes to give a featured look, and then we have other stories as title headlines, and a tag cloud listing the current most popular keywords from the content in the DailyMe feed index (what about a tag cloud limited to just your own feed set).
Navigation is by tabs, click on a topic tab, then click on a feed within this topic.

Click a link to read the summary on its own page, and be able to link to the original story, save it, print it, email it, bookmark it, rate it, and leave a comment.
I can’t see inhouse blogging or notes, or networking features, but this could become a social network news sharing hub, like FeedEachOther and Streamy…but then again too many features is not a good thing.

I’m guessing we see every story from our feed set, not just popular ones.

Ideal RSS Print Newspaper (or Magazine)

All stories are full-text with a visible link to the original, so you can read the story when you go online…also visible links to every reference in the article (maybe all this stuff could be in an appendix somewhere, so as not to ruin the look and flow of the newspaper).

I like the MyFeedz idea where you can import your OPML and then choose tags, then you can read content either by feed or tag…or you can let MyFeedz scan your OPML and deliver content by auto-tag.

The content that doesn’t fit in your manual tags, could then be put in a tag called “other”, this way you are not missing out on content.

The highly linked to articles could be ranked first, and the related articles labled underneath.

So if MyFeedz had a DailyMe newspaper layout, you would get a front page with the 3 or so most popular articles of the day in your feed set…the 2nd - 4th page would also have popular articles (the 2nd page would also have an index).
The 5th page onwards would have stories under topic tags…the last few pages would have stories that don’t fit in any of the topic tags, or perhaps they could come under auto-tagged topics.
The back page could have recommened stories, just like MyFeedz and Megite.

Contenders

DailyMe
Simply Headlines
Feed Journal (RSS Star)
myBroadsheet
MyFeedz (Flex)
RSS2PDF
Megite

I think a Newspaper view and print out should be a feature in any RSS Reader

[ADDED 20/11/07: FeedJournal : Newspaper version of your blog]

CloudPrint - allows you to print a webpage and send it from your desktop by SMS…it will be converted to PDF and receivers type in their received code to access the PDF. [via DI]

Feedmarklet - create a feed, and then drag a bookmarklet to your browser…when ever you see a webpage you want to add as a new item to your feed, click the bookmarklet. No need to fill in a form, it adds the title and URL for you, and even text if you highlight it…getting closer to my daily catch idea.
Similar are bookmarking tools (del.icio.us), link blogs (siphs), and edge feeds (publi.sh). [via WWD]

Aroundme - download and create your own social network [via m]

Notifir - a dashboard for all your meme based social bookmarks (those that have voting), this way you can keep track of all the votes you get from all your accounts in one spot, and also watch your friends activity.
What about an ego dashboard of sorts to see who has bookmarked/rated your blog posts from various services? [via m]

Feedjit - a widget to see live data of who has visited/left your website and what links have been clicked and where they are located.
Similar are MyBlogLog recent readers widget (people), MyBlogLog Top Links (links), ClustrMaps, GeoVisitors , whos.amung.us (location), Spotplex (clicks)
[via m]

Commentt - audio or video comments for your blog, also see blipback and more. [via m]

Joopz - A new plugin to send/receive SMS from within MS Outlook, also can send an SMS to your contacts.
I’ve posted previously on Joopz:
“Send a message from the web or web-enabled device to SMS (web history or conversations) to a friend or contacts, also send to a group…people can reply to only all (not sure if this is by SMS or web-enabled phone), or course you can reply from the web. You can toggle to receive messages on the web or SMS.”
Also has reminders and schedules by SMS. [via WW]

ScrollTalk - a evolving chat room where you enter some tags (keywords), and you will see any msgs including these keywords…also add a friend for persistent chat.

Seesmic - similar to Twitter micro-blogging, but for video. We have seen micro-blogging with video, but Seesmic has lots more. Add a video by webcam, or link to a video from any video service, or upload a video…public stream, follow stream, etc…
Also get Seesmic items you add to also add to Twitter and other networks…Seesmic also scans Twitter for links to video’s and adds them to it’s public stream (so not only are you seeing content from users adding stuff to Seesmic, but it’s also scanning the web - Twitter - and adding to the mix)
Plus audio/video from IM chats can be recorded and added to Seesmic. [via TC]

DocSyncer - synchs desktop and Google Docs, when ever you add or edit on your desktop, this will reflect online.

Here are various ways of viewing mobile versions of your blog.

Mobile version

Lots of web sites I use now offer a mobile friendly version of their site eg. Gmail mobile, Google Reader mobile, Facebook mobile, Twitter mobile, del.icio.us mobile, etc…

Reason for this is to render the content for a smaller screen, and also to strip out unwanted graphics, and to also organise the page in sections to scroll down your screen, instead of scrolling across.

Mobile friendly search

You are not at a loss for websites that don’t have a mobile version, if you go to the Mowser search engine, all search results are simple link results, like Google, and when you click on a hit, Mowser will present content suitable for mobile phones.

Check out my blog on Mowser, you could bookmark this page on your phone.

Another mobile browser is Wampad, check out my blog (there’s even a table of contents button to navigate the page).

Others similar services are Phonifier, IYHY and Skweezer.

[ADDED 30/10/07: Nanosites - just add your feed to the URL
eg. http://siteshuffle.com/microsite_helpers/microsite_rss?feed=http://feeds.feedburner.com/libraryclips

RSS content

If you want to read the latest RSS content of a blog, use a desktop RSS Reader (FeedReader, litefeeds-send items to: email, blog, del.icio.us, mobispine-like litefeeds, even send items to Twitter and Facebook,) on your mobile phone or a web-based one (Google Reader mobile web-or readermini, FeedM8 and more), as the RSS version of a blog is just the content with all the other stuff ignored…RSS content is very mobile friendly by default.

NOTE: also check out start or widget pages for a mobile experience like Widsets, and Plusmo (also iGoogle mobile and WebWag mobile)

Create your own mobile version of your blog

FEEDBURNER
Beside the obvious Feedburner content of your blog, see mine, there are plenty of services that create mobile versions of your blog.

TIGGDO
Tiggdo, this is a more professional service, where they will create a mobile version of your website.

WINKSITE
I’ve posted before on Winksite, where you can create a mobile friendly version of your blog, but winksite is more than that, it’s more a mobile space and community, with your mobile you can access: a general use folder, a page of content via a remixed (spliced) feed, an announcements page, your blog, a Public RSS Reader, a place to store bookmarks, your profile, and connect with the greater Winksite community.

Here is my blog profile on Winksite, great reading on a web-enabled mobile phone.

Here is my greater Winksite badge, there is also a widget, but the code is not friendly to my blog:

Similar to MyBlogLog, it’s social networking for you as a user (add friends, map, mesaging) and a community for your blog, meaning you have a profile for you in general and a profile for each of your blogs…your blog can’t add people back, so it’s moreso people becoming a member of the community around your blog.
Members can leave and subscribe to messages…you can even monetize your blog.

Like iCast, Zingku and others, from a widget on your blog people can fill in their number and send the content as an SMS to their mobile phone…when you click the Winksite badge (seen above) there is a link called “Send To Phone”.
They also offer another widget for just this feature but the code is not friendly on my blog.

Unlike iCast and others you don’t get a scheduled SMS of the lastest post, and you don’t send an SMS to pull the latest post, instead you are simply sent the link to the mobile friendly version of a blog profile, where you can browse the latest stuff for yourself.

The Winksite greater picture is mobile productivity and social networking and chatting, etc… basically a mobile network and community.

XFRUITS
Next is xFruits, nice and easy RSS to mobile service…xFruits has lots more features.

Here is the xFruits mobile friendly version of my blog:

MOBIFEEDS
Then we have mobifeeds, check out my blog.

MOFUSE
And finally the new comer is MoFuse.

It’s an invite only at the moment, but here is an example of the Read/Write Web blog.
Like Richard Macmanus says this could be something for Feedburner to offer…MoFuse even give you a dashboard with stats, etc…

Barcodes

Winksite also use QRcode and ShotCode to be able to put a widget (badge) of a barcode on your blog, scan enabled phones can scan the code to deliver content to their phone.

For more on barcodes see qode, semapedia, decode, ShotCode, BeeTagg, and MyTago.

[ADDED 27/10/07: BEETAGG]

Scan the BeeTagg to read the feed on your mobile phone.

To be able to scan this barcode in order to read this feed you need to get the BeeTagg Reader
Send SMS with text “Bee” to +44 762 480 24 86

Also make your own mobile websites with BeeTaggs, Mobisites.

[ADDED 2/11/07: Listen to feeds on your mobile phone]
[ADDED 2/11/07: Get blog updates on your mobile phone (IM, email, SMS, audio, web)]
[ADDED 2/11/07: iCast : Offer RSS to SMS for your blog subscribers and media widgets]

I’ve posted on ways where you can convert an RSS feed to SMS, IM, email, etc…and I also covered on how the blog owner can organise this so subscribers don’t have to go to the trouble.

In a few clicks, visitors to my blog, can subscribe by email (FeedBlitz), by IM and SMS (Zingku), audio podcast text-to-speech (Talkr), direct-to-phone audio (mobilize) and lots more.

RSS to SMS

Like Zingku, iCast is another option to provide your subscribers a way to get your feed content by SMS.

MOBILE RSS ALERT
A maximum of 15 alerts will be sent per month
Standard text charges may also apply
Cost - $3 per month
Opt-out - Text “STOP” to 426682 (IAMOTA)
Help - Text “HELP FEED” to 426682 (IAMOTA)

iCast subscribers will find the widget on your blog and subscribe, there isn’t a number to SMS.
Whereas Zingku doesn’t have a widget for your blog, instead (via your blog sidebar or word of mouth) people can SMS your keyword to a number to get your content.

When the blog is updated the subscriber is automatically SMS’d updates for a month.
Whereas with Zingku you txt a number to be txt’d back content (you pull the content to yourself whenever you feel like it).

iCast cover these carriers - Alltel, Boost, Cellular one, Nextell, Sprint
Zikgku cover these carriers - Zingku is only available in the US.

I’m considering keeping Zingku to offer RSS-to-IM alerts, but may change to iCast to offer RSS-to-SMS alerts.

Zingku is not just for publishers, anyone can join up and create alerts for their favourite blogs (and lots more other features), so it’s a service handy for both publishers and subscribers…and Google recently acquired Zingku, so let’s see what happens next.

NOTE: Zingku is not just an RSS to SMS service, it has lots of different offerings.

Other handy tools for subscribers to do it for themselves are: ZapTXT, Blastfeed, Rasasa, FeedCrier, immedi.at, RSSFwd, Rmail, xFruits, 4info, msgme, etc….

To post content to your blog see, The many ways to post to your blog.

Media/Text Widgets

iCast also has a media/text widgets feature, where the publisher (blogger) uploads an image/text/video and visitors to your blog can send this content to their phone (the text widget has nifty templates eg. party)…see how it’s done.

–Image widgets–
Cost - $0.99 pay per use

–Text widgets–
Cost - $0.50 pay per use

They even have a Facebook app to send pics to your phone.

Terms and conditions.

Oh, I forgot to mention when someone clicks your widget and sends something to their phone, you get cash.

Only problem I have is that the publisher (blogger) can’t add media or text to their widget from their mobile phone eg. cellblock, pickle, and lots of others.

TextMarks, msgme, mozes , Broadtexter and others allow people to txt your keyword to a number (or join via the widget on your blog) and they will get a txt back with the latest content that is in your widget, or on a subscription schedule.
The publisher can also add content to their widget by txt’g from their mobile phone (like cellblock and pickle mentioned above).

SayNow is the same for audio, it allows you to post audio to your widget from your phone, upload a file or via a podcast feed…then your visitors, like Textmarks can text your keyword or subscribe via the widget, then they will be notified by SMS, email, or a voice call…then they ring a number to listen to the voice message…they can also respond.

iCast Mobile RSS Alerts

Zingku RSS to IM alerts

Add ZingkuPal as a contact and IM the word jtropea3

via Zingku (hover over icon)
Send an IM for the latest post

Zingku RSS to SMS alerts

US only…Text jtropea3 to 33669…but first validate your mobile by text 6869 to 33669

via Zingku (hover over icon)
Send an SMS for the latest post

VoiceIndigo-Mobilize listen to podcast (text-to-speech) of latest post

Listen to the most recent post

iCast Image Widget

iCast Text Widget

Library clips blog for Sale
Price:	$8,000,000
Contact:	http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/contact/
Details:	I come with the blog as well..this is a joke

[ADDED 26/10/07: Mobile friendly version of your blog]
[ADDED 2/11/07: Listen to feeds on your mobile phone]
[ADDED 2/11/07: Get blog updates on your mobile phone (IM, email, SMS, audio, web)]

The other week I posted on searching your social filter, and your blog network as your social filter, one of the main players in this field is Lijit, where you can search across your lifestream and Reading List. You can also add others Lijit users to your search filter, so you are searching across the filter of you and someone else, or you could just choose to visit that other users profile and search their Lijit.

Anyway the purpose was that social filtering is a way to deal with the enormity of the web, and achieve some quality by searching people you trust as a filter. These people you trust have interests similar to yours, people you admire, people that are experts in a field, so searching across these people you know is a perfect filter. If you are researching a new interest, you may search an expert locator/lifestream service like Lijit or Ziki and find someone’s profile and search their filter.

Social filter can work in other ways other than search, we can share our RSS Reader subscriptions on the sidebar of our blogs by using a Grazr widget, or join a RSS Reader social network like FeedEachOther or Streamy and browse someones profile, read their feed subscriptions and share links…or share your OPML at an exchange type service like SYO.

BlogRovr

Another way to use a social filter is BlogRovr, which I briefly mentioned a little while back.
This totally unique tool built on a simple idea has become an instant addition to my regular web 2.0 daily experience.

How it works?

Upload a bunch of feeds by importing your OPML Reading List.

From now on when you browse the web, if any of the subscriptions in your Reading List have, in one of their blog posts, linked to the webpage you are currently on, you will be able to read these blog posts.

How cool is that…surf to anypage on the web, and pleasantly be told if people you trust have talked about this site in the past.

If there is breaking news about an article or a new website, instead of searching your RSS Reader to see who has posted about it, just surf to the webpage everyone is talking about, and BlogRovr will tell and show who in your OPML has posted about it.

Now I’m coming to the purpose of this post…what if I want to see who else other than people in my OPML is talking about the newest hot website.

I guess I could consult a memetracker like TechMeme or megite.

NOTE: Megite also allows you to personalise a memetracker to your OPML.

Back to it…

What if at the BlogRovr website I could add friends, not really a social network, but just making a favourites list.

When I am reading a webpage, I could ask BlogRovr to show me content through someone else’s eyes.

eg. I’m reading a webpage about the latest web 2.0 product

- BlogRovr tells me who in my OPML has already posted about this product

- I can ask BlogRovr, who else has posted about this product according to friends A’s OPML,

- and I wonder if there are any posts from friends B’s OPML, and so on

- and maybe saying, show me posts about this webpage from all my BlogRovr friends, or just a group of my BlogRovr friends

This way I can surf the web and get reviews not just throught my immediate social filter, but the social filters of my friends.

What about mashing up BlogRovr and Techmeme…Adam Green already has a mashup where he can make a dynamic OPML of the sources that have a current post on TechMeme.

If I was looking at a webpage, I could ask BlogRovr, tell me if any of the sources that have a current post on TechMeme have posted about this page I’m viewing.

Same goes with the TechMeme Leaderboard, a Top 100 list of TechMeme sources.

When I’m on a webpage I could ask BlogRovr, tell me who has posted about this webpage from people in the TechMeme Leaderboard.

What about topics, I could ask BlogRovr, who in the Technorati blog topic “wiki” has posted about this webpage I’m on.

Any thoughts?

[ADDED: If you include your own blog feed into BlogRovr…you can find out which of all your blog posts have linked to one of your blog posts]

[ADDED: BlogRovr is a feature of a bigger product called Stickis…annotate the page you are on, and see other stickis people who have already annotated the page you are on…see more. Basically a sticky note blog social network.]

[ADDED: While we are there why not include some type of live impressions of a webpage, by being able to chat with others on the same page…a la Gabbly, Others Online, etc… NOTE: medi.um is more than this as you can click on a friends profile to see where there at, and join them at that webpage and chat, and then browse to other webpages together.]

[ADDED 11/11/07: Blogbar : search your outlink sources]

I posted on Spark open source instant messaging the other day, when I went to consult their help page, I got a pleasant surprise…it wasn’t a FAQ, it wasn’t a forum, it was a mixture of social networking and communities.

The Ignite Community uses Jive’s Clearspace service for forums and network blogs, I’ve posted on Clearspace before, but here is another look at a live example.

Community home page

- a list of community under community topics
- members
- tags
- polls
- What’s new stream with an RSS feed
(each piece of new content is identified by an icon; forum post, blog post, or new document…you can also limit the view to one of these content types…each new item has a link to the content source and the author)
- each content set on this homepage has a link to its own page

A selected community eg. Support

- this has sub-communities
- recent discussions (forum and blog posts)
- recent documents
- see just blog posts
- tag cloud
- top members

Also see a sub-community eg. Spark Support

Here is a random user profile.

- latest blog posts
- latest forum posts
- latest documents
- send an email
- send a private message
- lacks a comment wall
- tag cloud
- list of blogs this user owns
- RSS feed for this user

You can also have a watchlist to be updated on content of your choice.

Blogs

I tried to create a blog, but I couldn’t find how, I could only add a document or forum topic…when I add a forum topic it asks what community I want to add this to.

So I don’t really know how blogs fit into the scheme of things with Clearspace.

Perhaps each community has a few group blogs, and just like forums, when you add a new blog post, it asks which blog you would like to add it to…this means a blog is not personal, but confined to a community.

Perhaps each user has a personal blog, and when you add a post you can also decide if you want to send it to a community as well.

Perhaps a bit of both, each user can have a personal blog and send posts to community pages, and a community may also have resident blogs.

I see this as social network blogging co-existing with communities.

Related:
Blogs : the many ways “many” come together
Bandwidth and community platforms

Just been playing with Ignite’s Spark Enterprise Instant Messaging (IM), and am really impressed, although I haven’t played around with others so I can’t compare eg. Communicator, Parlano, etc…

Spark Features

- IM chat
- multiple one-on-one chat in tabs
- profiles
- on-the-fly conference chat
- on-the-fly one-on-one private chat with conference attendees
- public/private persistent chat rooms
- message blasts
- poke/alert (makes your IM chat box “buzz” or “shake”)
- contact list with create your own presence/status indicators
- create groups for contacts
- instant screenshots and send
- send files (drag and drop)
- VOIP
- conversation archive
- tasks
- notes
- pop up toast
- plug ins

etc…

What I like is persistent chat, instead of chat sessions…when you click on a friends name you can see all the conversation organised by date. So if you send a msg you can close the chat box, when you send one later it’s the same daily chat session…this way you don’t have to have all these chat sessions open.

Feedback

I can’t search my chat history across all contacts

I can search people by name (not by tag), but I can’t browse an A-Z directory, like Outlook GAL.
It would be easy to enhance the profiles as expert locators, also an expert tag cloud…perhaps it could show people tags on a users profile, but clicking these would launch to the expert locator website, so instead of having it’s own expert locator, it just integrates this information from a 3rd party.

I can’t include userB into the chat I’m having with userA, instead I have to create an on-the-fly chat room, and invite both users, then close my chat with userA.

What else could be included without becoming beyond IM…see Vyew for web conferencing, YackPack for audio conferencing and wiki collaboration.

Is it possible to cc: userB whilst chatting with userA, by using a (@) symbol?

eg. I heard the other day that @userB finished the report, I wonder if it has been submitted…
This would automaticallly open a chat window with userB with only that msg in it…if all 3 want to chat together they need to do a on-the-fly conference

Online IM presence

I really like the online presence/status indicator, and that you can make your own.

Sometimes when you are looking for someone at work, you might see a post-it note on their monitor saying “Gone interstate for today, back tomorrow”…why not also put this as your online status as well.

Problem with this is that if this person is not one of your added contacts, you won’t know their online presence, unless searching in the general contact directory could show everyone’s online presence.

Other issue is that it’s “online” presence, so if this person is not logged onto a PC, then their presence will be “offline”, and that’s it…I wonder if you can create an offline presence msg.
So someone goes to their IM contacts and see’s that I’m offline, and that I have left a brief offline status msg.

I suppose you can’t go wrong with an email auto-responder, or perhaps even an IM auto-responder, but this means you have to do something, instead with “presence” all you have to do to be informed is look at the indicator next to the contact name.

Presence as publishing

Hmmm…this takes us to the beauty of a presence blogging service like Twitter.
For a starter this is not ideally chat, it’s purely presence, this whole service is around one feature, your presence (whether you are online or offline), it’s not an IM service.
But like IM, you have a contacts list, the difference is that you can “follow” people’s presence (these people don’t need to add you back as contacts), and you can be “folllowed” (you don’t have to add these people back as contacts).

Basically your presence is being published, all users can see this on the public page, or in their own space if they have added you as a contact. If an IM contact directory allowed you to see presence next to a user, this would be similar, as you don’t have to be friends to know each others presence.

So the difference here is not a strict black and white status indicator, it’s moreso presence published as content…what I’m doing now type thing.

Since it’s on a web platform instead of a desktop application, you can always see presence from where ever you are.

The other powerful feature is that technically it’s not “online presence”, it’s just “presence”, because you don’t have to be online to post your presence, or see the presence of others, as it can be used by email and SMS (not just at the website, IM, desktop apps, browser apps, mobile web, etc…).

Now if that worker has gone interstate, and they are not online, and they are not one of my contacts anyway, I could look at their enterprise presence (if we used a service like Twitter), and see their latest published presence.
When I look at their user space, I might see they posted they are “interstate for one day, back tomorrow”, but I might also see about 5 more posts about; the weather, about to meet client, how the meeting went, plane is delayed, etc…it’s not only presence crossed with publishing, but you have an archived presence stream, so it’s presence in context to some extent.

Twitter has made a whole service out of presence with a publishing bent, similar to blogging, perhaps micro-blogging, and because it’s on the web, we can always see the latest presence, and we can even engage with it when we are not on the web, by using SMS. And since it’s more than a status indicator we have space to explain a little about our presence…because presence in this way is more like publishing, we tend to update our presence a lot.
This is different to status which is more “available/unavailable”, with perhaps a little context about why you are available/unavailable…this type of presence is within the context of availablity, whereas presence blogging is moreso about what you are doing, or an announcement, it’s not restricted to just availablity.

IM content is in a chat box with a presence indicator in the contact list, whereas micro-blogging content is the actual presence.

Just to spice is up a little, micro-blogging also has asynchronous conversation, if in your presence update you include a users name with a reply symbol eg. @johnt….this user will be notified you have talked about them in your presence.
Some say using your presence space to chat to someone, is using the service different to its purpose.

IM is part of a bigger picture labelled Unified Communication (UC), something Mike Gotta tells us Microsoft and Cisco are tackling…let’s not forget Google’s array of services that could be all connected and the inclusion of their new acquisitions Grand Central and Jaiku.

Related:

Twitter for business and presence social network

Just came across Melcrum’s Communicators’ Network, a community based social network.

I’ve just had a snoop around and it seems to be social networking across groups.

All users have a profile, showing:
- latest blog posts
- contacts
- documents
- comments
- expert tags (by interest, and by specialisation)

- it doesn’t say what groups a user is a member of
- it doesn’t have the latest forum posts by a user

Here is an example user.

The Communicators’ Network has lots of groups, and each group has members, and there is a forum for each group…I don’t see a group events, documents, wikis, etc…doesn’t seem very set up for groups, moreso for individual networking.

I can’t even see the latest blog posts, and comments by members in a group.

Here is an example group.

All the blogs and forums are aggregated into their own view.

Not sure if it works this way, but what I’ve said before is essential that you can publish blog posts in your own user space, and decide to tag particular posts you want to appear in a group you are a member of…as not all your blog posts will be relevant to a group, or perhaps any groups.

Anyway, the Communicators’ Network are in the same space as others I’ve posted on such as; Blogtronix, Ning, Clearspace and CollectiveX…they all have their subtle differences.

I have a few more services offering groups and networking at my post, A community or network around your blog.

Just read a great paper by Motorola on mobile motion presence, using your mobile phone to keep track of when a friend is stationary or in motion.

There are lots of way you can do presence, Twitter for example is on the onus of a user to publish their presence, followers are pushed an SMS, etc…another service Groovr, is well into location presence a similar way by using check in/out commands.

Then we have GPS location tracking services where you can exactly know where a person is located, this is no messing around.

Motorola could offer anything, but this study is careful, it’s testing different types of users: couples and friends, and how they feel about different types of presence methods.

There was a general feeling that full on GPS location tracking was a bit intrusive, I tend to agree.

Anyway, their idea is motion presence using cell towers, if you are on the go, you pass different cell towers, if your phone registers passing these towers, then it means you are moving…they are kind of like check points.

When your phone passes 2 cell towers within 5 minutes that were not visible within the previous 15 minutes, it is considered “moving”.

The updates are passive meaning you don’t have to ping to find out, or you don’t get notifications, basically it’s always on (it works by SMS which lives in a log)…just check your phone to see your list of friends and next to each friend there will be a status “moving” or “not moving” and also a number denoting how long they have been in this state.

I tend to agree, in my opinion this is the most non-intrusive way for this type of information, but then Motorola want to know if it’s too far removed and useful at all.

Usage

I know my wife is sick at home today, but I see she has been in motion for 30 minutes…aha what’s the bet she’s shopping again.

My friend has a meeting but I can’t remember the exact time and I don’t want to ring him, but I see right now he is “moving” so here’s my chance.

My wife doesn’t need to ring me to see if I’m on the way home, or how far I am, as she knows I have been “moving” for 45 minutes, and I usually take 60 minutes to get home from work, (this gives her time to do her own stuff before I get home) if I’m still moving at 75 minutes she’d probably call me.

It’s 2.30pm and my husband should have picked up the kids and be on the way home, but he’s “not moving”, turns out he was asleep.

We have a sick child at home and my husband went to pick up some medicine, it’s been 15 minutes and I see he is “moving”, I can infer that he’s on his way home.

It was also documented that some people checked the log frequently for something to do or as a habit, but on busy days they may never look at it…thanks to no notifications it doesn’t bother you if you choose not to care.

In all these examples motion doesn’t really have any context itself unless you know the person, or their plans for the day, in this light you may be able to infer location or activity.

Some particpants wanted a little more information, like if they were waiting for a lunch meeting, knowing the person was “moving” was not enough, they wanted to know how far way they were.

Others wanted a history of motion, like todays motion of person A so far is:
not moving 60
moving 10
not moving 120
moving 10
not moving 240

From this a person can infer that my partner has gone for a 10 minute drive to her friends house, stayed 2 hours, then drove back home, and has been home for the last 4 hours.

Others stated it would be useful to check up on their kids “hmmm, I dropped them off at their friends house, so why have they been moving for 30 mins, what are they up to?”

Motion presence could still be seen a bit intrusive, depends on the situation, I guess you have to weigh up if it would be more useful than not, and put up with the nots, in the end you have to infer, it’s not telling you direct stuff.

Here is the paper.
Here is the slide deck.

More on Social Presence

Social Presence: We Need To Push The Reset Button
New Presence

List

Here is a list of location-specific presence services I know of, as you can see presence location is a hot space.

The Swarm
iotum Talk-Now
Jaiku
Groovr
dodgeball
mycitymate
buddyping
WhoAt
FriendsTribe
Socialight
Flagr
Earthcomber
enpresence
mysaki
playtxt
Jambo Networks
Mates
mobiluck
SLAM
Loopt
helio
ContextPhone
Reno
WatchMe
Plazes
Dopplr
Meetro
RadiusIM

[ADDED 6/12/07: Google Maps pinpoints your locations by triangulating between cell towers (for those without GPS)]

[ADDED 7/2/08: Companies Betting on Location Based Mobile Ads]

[ADDED 7/2/08: Mobile presence : Iotum-Talk Now and “The Swarm”]

[ADDED 12/2/08: Path Intelligence Monitors Foot Traffic in Retail Stores By Pinging People’s Phones]

[ADDED 5/03/08: JotYou: Location-Based Mobile Phone Messaging]

Related:
A list of SMS groups and services and mobile social networks