BoardMeister

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BuddySpace
Enhanced Presence Management
Thoughts as of November 2001
Prof. Marc EisenstadtKnowledge Media Institute,
The Open University
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Massive/enriched presence (1)

• Presence is motivating (P2P growth), central
  (comms location based services), complex
  (context, devices, locations, intentions).
• Jabber open source XML-based communications
  infrastructure, supporting dynamic presence
  detection and management (and enabling
  people/device/system/application
  inter-communication).
• Crowds present a qualitatively different kind of
  experience, i.e. massive scale is a positive
  asset to the end-user experience, rather than a
  liability.

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Massive/enriched presence (2)

• Presence visualisation can provide a stepping
  stone to scalability and enrichment of ways to
  convey presence.
• Presence semantics can help us think about more
  powerful ways to convey presence.

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Whats massive

• Thousands of peers at once (asset, not liability)
• Quality end-user experience
• Large audience-participation webcasts
• Massively multiplayer cooperative games
• Instant Messaging based on pure presence
  (BuddySpace)

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Presence defined
The aggregated view of a persons dynamically
changing attributesSource Dr. R. Chakraborty
(Versada Networks), Jabbecon01

• Availability (Im logged on for a
  videoconference)
• Preference (Only my boss can interrupt me now)
• Capability (My device can accept video calls
• Characteristics (Translate to French)
• Location (Im abroad urgent calls only)

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BuddySpace Background

• Instant messaging is one of the fastestgrowing
  communication services ever
• Over 4 million new registrations/month
• Initially, high usage among teens, home users,
  and international
• Corporate use taking off big

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Location-based services...similar story
According to Ericsson62 of private mobile
users, 51 of business mobile usersare willing
to use location services Willing to pay 3.40 -
5.50 monthly
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Chat location are crucial in online games
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Odigo Buddy List, Filters, Radar
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• Objective Catch the prey
• Prey is hired
• Teams
• coordinators
• hunters
• GPS positioining
• Location hints
• decreasing intervals
• Communication
• 2 way SMS
• Group messages

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KMis experience

• KMi Stadium
• 5 years of virtual classrooms
• Remote telepresence

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Key thoughts/steps

• Killer app / Killer game misguided
• Pure presence is what appeals to users
• Dots on maps can scale up.
• filtering smart clustering algorithm
• Buddy list -gt Buddy Space
• Screensaver inobtrusive!

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First prototype

• 157,000 individuals (OU student database)
• Runs as standalone app or screensaver
• Lets see it

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• Real OU student database (157,000 students)
• Zoom maps grabbed live on the net

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• Real-time map grab
• Colour-coded filters
• Centre of gravity clustering
• Post-code/national force-fields

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• Original data is only limit can find your
  house!
• Your IP number -gt latitude/longitude is automatic

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Custom displays

• Geographical high-quality maps (just licensed
  Maps in Minutes)
• Logical (e.g. corporate campus, tower block,
  etc.)
• Artistic (Mexican wave, Graffiti wall, Tetris,
  etc.)

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Possible uses

• OU / Virtual U peer group visibility
• Corporate whos doing what?
• Parents where are kids?
• Teenagers my mates
• Games search capture, prizes, etc.
• Emergency healthcare
• Enhance dire rock-webcasts
• Plug-ins / value-added to big 5 (ICQ, AIM,
  Yahoo, MSN, Odigo)

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BuddySpace IM

• Lightweight radar view
• Pushed roster automatically constructed
• Custom maps
• Embeddable maps
• 9 screen-shots follow

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Plain chat
Automatic rosterconstructionduring login
personal tutorgroup, work groupetc.
Embeddedbrowser for custom newsflashes etc.
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Typical view ofOU tutorial group
Automatic rosterconstructionduring login
personal tutorgroup, work groupetc.
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Automatic mapconstructionfrom user data
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Smart inset chosen,depending onactual data
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Map faces arecustomised dotsdisplay true
status
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Floorplan of KMi Dots are those ofinterest to me
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OU campus map
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World, Europe,KMi floorplanall together
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Marcs personal daily view
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Timeline view, e.g. which TMA?
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Research Questions (I)

• Low-cost power maintain simplicity yet add
  powerful presence indicators?
• Scalability Can our approach scale to
  distributed workgroups of realistic size?
• Added value What extra benefits do our workers
  derive from the serendipitous interactions
  afforded by lightweight peripheral presence?

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Research Questions (II)

• Automatic filtering automatic roster
  construction and group visualisation without
  significant end-user investment?
• Visual Representation What it the best way to
  display work colleague presence in a
  meaningful-yet-non-intrusive fashion?
• Semantics of match-making What do we need to
  store about the research interests of colleagues
  in order to indicate their simultaneous presence?

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Research Questions (III)

• Semantics of presence online, away, busy
  and offline less useful than now working on
  work-package X, so we need to develop a richer
  presence vocabulary to reflect this. What should
  this vocabulary look like?

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Research Questions (IV)

• Massively muliplayer cooperative games Can we
  leverage pure presence to create a Mexican
  Wave effect?
• Big numbers asset, not liability
• Remote audience 1st class citizen
• Smoke-and-mirrors synchronization tricks