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:: 2003/03/28 ::

Rafe Needleman's "Super Caller ID"

Rafe Needleman's "What's Next" column in Business 2.0 this week reports on efforts of the cell companies to load on some sophisticated new services that smell suspiciously like the presence and availability capabilities in instant messaging.

Needleman writes

"A few companies have a solution, which I've started referring to as "super caller ID." It works like this: When a call comes in to your cell phone, not only do you see the number and perhaps the name of the calling party, as with your current phone, but you're also presented with a menu that lets you select a message to immediately send to the caller, like "Can't talk now, please leave a message" or "Is it urgent?" or "SMS me instead.""

What's odd is that Needleman doesn't contrast this to the 'away messages' that instant messaging uses: 'Away right now, call me on 555-222-1212 if its urgent' or 'On the phone' or 'In a meeting.'

One undercurrent is the obvious competition between IM and phone use. As people increase their use of IM, calling decreases. Presence and availability make communication more efficient: less vmail and wasted time.

The coming unification of voice-over-IP and presence-based commmunication is an enormous threat for the traditional wire and wireless phone companies, who can see the portent of voice communication through the Internet as crushing at least several major sections of the communication stack where they make serious dough today. Microsoft is one company that is advancing a compelling vision of the integration of real-time communication and voice-over-IP to all manner of devices: PDAs, PCs, and Microsoft OS-enabled phones. The phone companies may be left with only the wires and wireless parts of the stack, with all the real value producing services in the hands of those managing the IP.

So they better scramble, and they will need to do more than "super caller ID" to do it.


:: Stowe Boyd 3/28/2003 09:47:40 AM [link] ::
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A Back Door to IM Interoperability?

I spoke with Kapi Attawar of Endeavors Technology about the firm's Magi Secure XIM product, which offers a Trillianesque mechanism for interoperability between various instant messaging products, like AIM and MSN.

The product concept is this: Magi is a secure application distribution technology, designed originally so that companies could roll out applications to the desktop easily, and so that collaboration -- file sharing, online conferencing, instant messaging, and so on -- is securely encrypted and access controlled. The Magi Secure XIM product has extended this baseline technology with specific adaptors, so the desktop Magi product will allow users of MSN and AOL instant messaging clients to communicate to others, securely and transparently.

One of the neat tricks here is to add the non-AOL users -- people on MSN, for example -- to the AIM buddy list, and vice versa. Note that the product does not actually push instant messages through the AOL or MSN networks -- the secure, authenticated business communication is directed through a Magi-to-Magi channel. This requires users on both sides to purchase and download the Magi Secure XIM product, but the end result is a secure, authenticated, and interoperable mechanism for business communication. The user can still use his AIM (or MSN) client to chat with friends in an insecure, unauthenticated way through the AOL (or MSN) network. And both kinds of buddies are on the same buddy list: it's only the channels of communication that are different.

Very interesting stuff. Note that Endeavors is part of the way to the trusted third party authentication gateway I wrote about in "The Coming Power Shift": more to follow on their plans, following a meeting planned for early April.

:: Stowe Boyd 3/27/2003 11:12:10 AM [link] ::
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