Presence and IntComm WG

["Ben Chinowsky" <>]

*Action Items as of September 6*

(high priority)
[ACTION] (8/31) Ben T. will send Rodger and Dennis a list of PIC-related
get-togethers at VON.
[ACTION] (8/31) Rodger will schedule an evening PIC WG meeting at the
Internet2 Member Meeting.
[ACTION] (8/31) Dennis will contact Skyhook for more information.
[ACTION] (8/31) Mark will ask a Windows developer if the presence-agent
architecture he has in mind would work for Windows, and if there is any
equivalent to Growl in Windows.
[ACTION] (8/24 - in progress) Ben T. will contact the Galago developers to 
find
out how the presence-agent project could make use of Galago.
[ACTION] (8/24 - in progress) Mark will see if he can find interest in the
presence-agent project on the Psi developers' list.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will launch an email discussion of if and how to fix 
pals
and pals-dev.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will send out pointers to an assortment of XMPP-client
feature-comparison matrices, highlighting items of particular interest or
concern to the group.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will revise his Gaim setup instructions.
[ACTION] (5/18) Ben T. will post the calendar-integration code (written by his
2005 SoC student) on the Penn XMPP server; Mark will evaluate prospects for
modifying it to drive XMPP presence.
[ACTION] (5/11) Ben T. will look for students active in Place Lab to
work with PIC.

(medium priority)
[ACTION] (8/3) Joe will update the group on work in IETF SIMPLE, after he
talks to Jon Peterson at VON.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will put a discussion of current vendor offerings in the
location-services space on the agenda for a future call.
[ACTION] (pre-12/8 - in progress) Rodger and Joe will write up some use cases
for enterprise federations.

*Attendees*

Rodger Will - Ford
Joe Rork - Ford
Mark Sirota - Penn
Dennis Baron - MIT
Ben Teitelbaum - Internet2
Neal McBurnett - Internet2
Ben Chinowsky - Internet2

*Discussion*

Meeting planning:
- [ACTION] Ben T. will send Rodger and Dennis a list of PIC-related
get-togethers at VON.
- [ACTION] Rodger will schedule an evening PIC WG meeting at the Internet2
Member Meeting.

XMPP development:

Rodger noted that he's looking into a cell-phone-based person-tracking
application, trying to find out how precise this technology can be. Dennis 
noted
that Skyhook (http://skyhookwireless.com/) claims that WiFi access points, 
alone
or with cell towers, can provide better geolocation than cell towers alone;
[ACTION] Dennis will contact Skyhook for more information.

[ACTION] Mark will ask a Windows developer if the presence-agent architecture
he has in mind would work for Windows, and if there is any equivalent to Growl
in Windows.

The group noted that Google Talk and Skype have committed to work on
text-messaging interoperability. See:
http://www.saint-andre.com/blog/2006-08.html#2006-08-28T11:17
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=154207&Sn=BUSI&IssueID=29164
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=2366583

The group discussed the possibility of using XMPP to aggregate various forms
of presence and presence-like information (package tracking, flight tracking,
sports scores, blog updates...) and deliver it to a user's XMPP client. Mark
asked if this would amount to reinventing RSS. Rodger said that this approach
could be used with RSS, to make it work on more of a push model. He suggested
this approach would be useful for things like news and sports, where people 
want
to be kept informed, but without having to pay more than a minimum of 
attention;
RSS is web-based, and XMPP can do a better job of giving you "mildly intrusive
nudges" than the web can.