Another Use For Mobile RSS: Presence

I wrote last week about RSS on mobile phones, and it's been kicking around in my head a little bit. Like I said in that last post, a lot of people seem to get hung up on RSS as just a method with which to follow blogs, but if you consider RSS as a platform, bnot only an application, there's a lot more you can do with it. One such idea I've had would be to use it to broadcast presence information to and from mobile devices.

It's a pretty straightforward idea. You'd have an application that publishes an RSS feed with your presence info, and when you change that information, the app republishes the feed. It could then be followed by anybody with an RSS reader, or by other purpose-specific applications on PCs or mobile phones. As much as I'm trying to escape thinking about RSS in terms of blogs, using the analogy might help explain my concept: basically the application would be publishing a blog that contains a users' presence information. Only the latest entry, showing the most recently updated information, is important, and RSS could be used to broadcast it.

At the most rudimentary level, users could upload status messages, like those in IM programs: away, busy, available, at the store, in the shower, and so on. Their contacts could check their status before trying to call or message, and tailor their communications accordingly. The info could be viewed by anybody with an RSS reader. On a higher level, perhaps the application could update the feed, which is then read by an element in the network that then controls how people can be contacted. If a user says they're in a meeting, it shuts off push email and sends calls to voicemail, or if they say they're at work, it diverts personal calls or something similar.

There's some holes in this rough idea, mostly having to do with the speed with which the information can be updated and disseminated, but I'm sure somebody more clever than I could figure out a way around them. All I'm trying to do is again illustrate platform thinking -- realizing all these tools at our disposal, whether it's something mobile-specific like SMS or MMS, or a wider technology like RSS, aren't just applications in themselves, but they can be used as the foundation for applications as well.

So when can I expect somebody to have a beta version to share? :D

Comments

[Tom Gordon]

Nice idea, and simple to implement using existing CMS engines or blog engines. It really depends on the process to keep the personal info updated. If you're at your PC, then it's easy (and you're probably available). if you want to link in to th emobile device, that's a little harder, but as with everything it requires input from the person setting their presence - which can lead to issues of data quality: what if I forget to update my presence settings when they change?

[Heiko]

HI!

Check out ContextPhone

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/group/context/

Should be easy.

Heiko