How am I only now discovering Dipity?

Dipity for “Instant Messaging” web search:

Instant Messaging on Dipity.

Citation:Peer discovery and connection management based on context sensitive social networks

I get a kick out of seeing this:  first citation of Microsoft (formerly of UBS, and then Parlano) chat patent 7,512,655 :

“In a method for automatically filtering communications, a networking request from an initiating party on an initiating communication device is received. The networking request pertains to a request for communication between the initiating communication device and a recipient communication device of a user over a communication channel. A determination is made of whether the communication channel to be used for the communication matches a communication channel for a previous communication between the initiating party and the user. It is automatically determined whether to grant the networking request, based at least in part on the determination of whether the communication channel for the communication matches the communication channel for the previous communication between the initiating party and the user. Other embodiments are described and claimed.”

at http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7512655&OS=7512655&RS=7512655

Skype Roadmap (ca. 2005) …

ahh.  Just for fun, thought we’d take a trip on the wayback machine …. http://skypejournal.com/blog/archives/2005/09/skypes_product.php.  On a related note, this appears to be a good (and less stale) introductory text.  Don’t let the title put you off.

To date, I’m still partial to Vonage.  Colleagues and friends at the other end of a Skype call have too poor of connections for my taste.  However, toys like this could persuade me otherwise:

(full disclosure:  I’m a pretty rabid Panasonic fan.  As I look around at years of accumulated gadgets, it’s the Panasonic stuff that lasts the longest in my experience).

Collaboration and Software Architecture

The International Association of Software Architects is holding an online e-Summit on collaboration.    One of the sessions:

A Framework for Deploying Collaboration Solutions

What methodology should EAs follow when it comes to architecting a collaboration architecture that truly addresses an enterprise’s business priorities? Joe will present key considerations and share his experiences in supporting enterprise architects in several Fortune 500 companies as they developed a collaboration strategy for their enterprise.
Cheers,
Eric

Listen people, is it really so hard to…

… actually respond with a conscious “Accept” or “Decline” to an Outlook meeting invite?!  Ignoring invites and leaving them as passively ‘Tentative’ is among the worst, if more subtle, breaches of online workplace etiquette IMO.

Speaking of which… you know the way when you do consciously set an outlook meeting response to ‘Tentative’, and the meeting organizer gets indication in the calendar entry that “Yes, you might be able to attend.”  No no no.  That should me “No, but he might be able to attend” or simply “Maybe.”

Feature request: Presence + Outlook calendar integration

When someone is “away” in chat/IM, it’d be great if you could right-click on their name in chat and go directly to their calendar for today.  That way you could see if they’re away because they are booked in a meeting, or if they are away but not booked.  This in turn will help you make a decision on whether you call them, chat them, or shoot them an email. 

Even better would be if Outlook calendar information for a user was also presented in situ alongside their presence info.  IE, “I am away from my PC.  Appointments until 3PM.” – with the appointments part auto-filled using Outlook data.

Video conferencing caused the mortgage meltdown?

Here’s one for you:

2005 article from Mortgage Banker magazine: Desktop video conferencing as a marketing tool for mortgage lenders.

OK, no it didn’t “cause” the meltdown.  Still, brings a chuckle…

Twitter blowing swine flu out of proportion

Interesting to note the negative unintended consequences of social networking technology like Twitter.  In this case Twitter is being criticized for encouraging poorly informed but rapid transmission of information.  And interesting parallel of thought viruses tracking biological viruses.

Cheers,
Eric

Garden-variety reasons desktop video conferencing is inferior

Admittedly, I’m still a bit of a snob when it comes to persistent, text-based, group chat.  Text is still the most functional.  And since I haven’t ranted on it in a while …

• My usual gripes are that you can’t conference with as many people as you can on telephone, or especially on group chat.  So, for group collaboration it’s inferior. Group text chat, in particular, has the advantage of not allowing for “blocking effects” that you can get on video, phone or even in person.
• It doesn’t capture, in a machine searchable way, the contents of a meeting.  So, you have to have a scribe/minute-taker.  So, it’s inferior and more expensive than group chat, news groups and email.
• And ok, yeah, so you can see the other person, and gauge their body language and other non-verbal cues.  If the video is of sufficient resolution and frame-rate.  And yes, research shows that during in-person conversations most communications are non-verbal anyway.  I’ve seen the research and I’ll buy it.   BUT…. what’s the fidelity of that non-verbal comms?  It would be interesting to see a study done on how much non-verbal communications actually gets transmitted faithfully over a video conference link.  There’s got to be some threshold (frame rate, resolution) at which non-verbal cue quality drops off.

For example ….  If video quality is 18 frames per second, resolution is VGA or worse,  and the other person’s face is poorly lit and taking up only 1/4-1/3 of the frame – are you even capturing all the sidelong glances and other expressions that we think we’re getting?

Cheers,
Eric

The Dawning of a New Right: To Hive

No, not “right” as in conservative vs. liberal.  “Right” as in “inalienable right.”  The Freedom to Hive.  I was thumbing through the new copy of Wired Magazine which just arrived today.  There’s an article on how game designers are working to foil the “wisdom of crowds.”  I flipped past the page, as I am not a big gamer.  But, something caught me and I turned back.  It started a train of thought.  I confess to not having read the article yet – I need to get this down uncontaminated.  Follow me here for a moment ….

I presume the author is referring to the practice of many gamers to subvert in-game challenges by soliciting help, both indirect (“how do I defeat the monster on level 9?”) and direct (multiple players collaborating in-game to solve a problem).

This is an extension of what people use the internet for every day.  Earlier today I googled how to fix something on my old car, and found newgroup postings from others with similar questions.  Elsewhere, the business models of folks like Amazon, Ask.com and especially Google are all built on the wisdom of crowds.

To old farts like me there is still a tinge of novelty to this.  “Ooo!  I’m not the only one trying to keep a 10 year old beater like mine still going!  Wow, that guy’s even has the same velour seats!”.  In all seriousness, though, think of our kids, and our future grand-kids for a moment.  They will know nothing different.  Pervasive collaboration, coordination and information sharing will be enmeshed in their learning, in their play, and ultimately in their work.   Collaboration to the point where it ceases to be a conscious choice.   Two thoughts follow:

1. Collaboration will be pervasive to the point where it is no longer value-add, but assumed.  Like freedom of choice or freedom of association.   What would we call this?  Freedom to Hive?  Sounds silly.  But, collaboration already is essentially frictionless today.  That will continue as technology improves and costs decline.  Take education.  With collaboration so pervasive outside school, will it become an expectation within the school?  Education is still fundamentally based on individual performance.  Working together on a test today is (usually) considered cheating.  In the future will it instead be unjust to grade on individual merit?
2. Paradoxically, in the future individual success will be achieved through the use of the collective.  In a way this has, of course, always been true.  But the pace and granularity of and emphasis on such collaborations are shifting.  More collaborations are happening.  They are more frequent.  And each collaborative transaction will be smaller and smaller (witness the evolution from blogs to microblogs like Twitter).

Additional Reading:

• Steven Johnson touches on the flipside of this toward the end of his book Emergence.  After living with games like The Sims, WoW, etc. how will the future’s adults approach, and influence, complex systems?  Good book – time to reread it.
• The new science of networks is relevant, and probably more than just at the edges.  Decent primer:  Duncan Watts’ Six Degrees.

Maybe this old classic was wrong after all, and the kids do need to be playing games to get their competitive edge.

Cheers,
Eric