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One of the main advantages that presence services can bring to users is the ability to set a “status message” in order to give more information about your availability or not availability. It’s certainly the simplest usage and surely more information can be offered, such as context-related information (i.e. connected to calendar information and so on).
I have a very simple wish list that only Iotum Talk-Now for Blackberry was offering but that’s not gone mainstream yet and it’s limited to Blackberry only. I use multiple IM networks and some clients, like iChat (that I currently use), let me define the same status message for all networks as well as set different statuses for each network. But It’s not enough.
That said, here is my very simple wish-list:
- I want the ability to choose different statuses and status messages for groups of contacts
- I want the ability to have a “status” on Facebook also, linked to my IM status, showing the same message
I don’t think I’m asking too much. It’s a shame that I cannot do that already in clients like GTalk or iChat, for example (the first, at least), or in most popular IM networks. I have groups, why I cannot set “Available” for my co-workers and “Not Available” for the rest of the world? Or “Available, but working” for my family and “Available” for my co-workers and “Not available” for friends?
We have been speaking of “presence” for years now, but easy features like the first one are still missing. Those should be the first step, something I should be able to find in any IM client/network. Why not yet?
December 18th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Yahoo! and MSN IMs allow for setting different status messages for different groups or buddies. Are you looking for something more/different. Are you looking for an ability to set the values programatically? I guess I am missing what is it that you are looking.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Aswath, I never used Yahoo IM neither MSN, but I use their networks in other clients. If this is a network capability, it’s a very good thing which I was not aware of, if instead it’s only a proprietary client to client feature, it’s not enough. I’ll try Yahoo on my mac and see if they provide what I mean. Thanks
December 19th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Aswath, I just installed Yahoo Messenger for Mac but can’t find the option you mentioned. Any tip?
December 19th, 2007 at 12:38 am
CTRL+mouse click on a name of a group or friend will give you a popup window and one of the choices is Stealth settings.
Oh I realize now my mistake. You are asking for more detailed status setting rather than just “Appear offline”. Sorry about that. In Y! you can only set a custom status globally. For what you want to do, you can try EnThinnai.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:52 am
I think we’re going to have to get used to communicating asynchronously more often than in real time. IM is near enough real time of course.
We’re probably going to want to use tools that expose the conversation on a one to many basis, rather than one to one…like blogs for example.
And we have more to do, and no more time in a day - and so our availability is going to reduce. QED. More booking conversations in advance!
http://www.conversationware.co.uk/presence-is-very-shiny-are-we-panning-for-fools-gold.htm