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IM Usage & Awareness Services
CowboyRobot writes "Queue has two related articles on Instant Messaging.
The first, written by two Sun Labs researchers, looks at the lack of standards in IM protocols, as well as the preception that the distracting nature of IM precludes it from being a more useful communications medium.
Their solutions involve new 'Awareness Services' and they summarize three research prototypes: 'Awarenex', 'Rhythm Awareness', and 'Lilsys'.
The second includes the results of an AT&T Labs study of IM use.
Among the findings, "Despite the perception that IM is commonly used for social purposes in the workplace, we found that was rarely the case. Only 13 percent of the conversations we monitored included any personal topics whatsoever, and only 6.4 percent were exclusively personal.""
how is it legal to monitor IM sessions without
the other parties consent?
the lack of standards in IM protocols, as well as the preception that the distracting nature of IM precludes it from being a more useful communications medium
It's too bad that the Jabber project has been largely dismissed as a chat-thingy, when it could solve real problems in a workplace.
Say you're spellchecking a document at work, and your wordprocessor doesn't recognize a deparment name. Your word processor could use Jabber to check other word processors in your organization if they know of the word in question.
I recently read Peer-to-Peer - Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies. An excellent book, containing, among other things, a chapter on Jabber.
.: Max Romantschuk
I work for a medium-sized content website; IM has become pretty deeply ingrained in the way people communicate around here. One good example: we use it to coordinate making new areas of the site live; the content people can sit at their own desks and launch content using our CMS, we can sit at our own desks to move code from the development server to the live server. And we QA as we go (we don't have a formal QA team). I can't imagine being able to coordinate this process so well in any other medium.
Our CIO made a certain IM client standard throughout the company, and all tech folks are *required* to have an IM account.
We find ourselves using it more often than not. For example, our HQ is in CA, and our Data Center is in MN. Instant messenging comes in handy while working on remote projects, troubleshooting, etc. We have a *ton* of remote offices with folks in them.
I don't know about you, but I am not much of a "phone person", and I find IM to be somewhat of a "happy medium" between phone and email.