Conversationware

I pinched that phrase from AVST.

We’ve been dreaming about usable mobile working since forever.

Anyhow, having been wandering around with a Mobile Broadband connection from Vodafone for a couple of weeks, I now think that working anywhere is finally a reality!

- at least for us in the UK - I’m not entirely sure where else this might be available at such reasonable cost - £25 per month according to the website.

Vodafone’s website also lists further down the page that it limits users to a 3 GB monthly total. It then refers to the terms and conditions - but I defy anyone to find the T’s and C’s that apply.

Typical huge company website - completely useless to navigate.

I reserved judgement for a while, but everywhere I’ve been for two weeks has been fine. No mountain tops or anything you understand, but Burton on Trent was ok, a typical middle england place. So, hence this mini review.

Everything is great with Mobile Broadband.

My only small gripe is a nagging system tray piece of software that displays 7.2MB at all times, even if a speedcheck does show most places to be giving me 250kb download.

It almost looks designed to hoodwink the user, which is probably not the intention, although, when you look at the marketing spiel on the website….you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

There is no need to hoodwink us Vodafone.

That’s because 250kb download is enough for most everything, including picking up voice messages via Outlook and VPN (although I would stay away from web development, as your browser will choose to fool you by showing a reduced bandwidth version of your site).

So, finally I am free from those useless wireless hot spot business models that drove my irritability through the roof. Why on earth wouldn’t Hotels provide their guests with broadband access, when it is obvious to the casual observer that it would attract more business for them?

Beats me. And now, Mobile Broadband will be beating them.

Here’s me in a hotel room testing a You Tube video across the modem…..no problem!

Why spend time, sweat and tears writing your predictions for the coming year.

Relax in your armchair instead, with your google persistent search turned on for the first week in January, and peruse until you find some you agree with - then link to them.

My interest is in how communications can help with business, in all senses of the word and to my mind, the best on the subject is a great article by Shomik Banerjee summarising 2007 and looking at 2008 for enterprise communications. Really good job.

Of course, I have to comment, or it’s not worth linking

Shomik doesn’t say if the headlined views below are in order of importance, or likelihood;

• A) PBX is passé, ‘UC’ is the buzzterm
• B) The Focus Market for Enterprise Telephony is Shifting to SMB
• C) Enterprise Mobility is ‘Hot’
• D) Collaboration Gains Fresh Impetus
• E) SOA and Web Services Gain Traction
• F) Open Source and Open System Gain Mindshare

In terms of market impact, I would have them in roughly the reverse order.

(maybe not by the end of 2008 though)

Another good read is by Charlie Bess on the EDS fellows ‘next big thing blog’. I like the Green IT idea, and I guess this is just an acceleration of the virtualization movement, which has been manic paced in any event.

Feel free to link to others in the comments!

Over on Aswath weblog, there is a useful suggestion on how Jajah could enable their dialing service without users having to be in front of their PC - Jajah are already promoting the ability to call without headphones - something that always put me off Skype.

I like the idea of a home phone being internet enabled, I guess everything will be before long. But if this is the case, perhaps the phonebook be online and automatically accessible by the phone display instead. 

A centralised phonebook accessible from any device, with click (press) to call would give the same experience as the PSTN, but improve it, because numbers are then also available from your desktop and from your browser enabled mobile.

The strength of Jajah, that calling is ubiquitous and doesn’t rely on any specific islands of connectivity, unlike some voip, is enhanced by giving contact information the same qualities.

Until then, phonebooks on mobile devices will continue to be a handy way of ‘encouraging’ call traffic through whichever network the devices are connected to - a lot of remote workers will still use their mobile because the numbers are on the phone….mainly because inbound callers’ details are so easy to add to the address book.

I always thought that connecting to someone (calling) should be done by clicking on a link, and that these links would ‘front’, or mask, the eventual device the call is delivered on. Abstracting contact details from the device you receive the call on would deliver us from yet another pain point - and deliver my personal holy grail, being a self updating phone book.

A phonebook that updates itself anytime a user changes device, which could be up to three or four times a day. That’s neat.

I’m an advocate of Gmail, with instant messaging, voice and voicemail built in - this coupled with desktop notification is significantly more useable for me than collections of web and client software from other vendors. Especially impressive is the ability to pick up gmail (and voicemails) on your mobile There is now a meebo-like web embedding of a group web chat facility,

The integration of a RSS reader with the email is more than convenient and with feedburner joining the ranks, I can see all of these things eventually supplementing the google desktop search tool to deliver me a very personalised search and delivery of tailored information.

Google has provided google docs, online hosted documents for groups to share, be updated and notified about. The aquisition of Jotspot hasn’t really hit yet, on the surface at least, but I’m looking forward to some basecamp type project collaboration from that, and now with google aquiring Zenter, we can have online slideshows and presentations too.

Youtube is starting to get quite useful, and I didn’t even mention google maps yet, which apart from giving me a quick, and slick, way to calculate journey times, has now gained a user business review facility

People question whether it is right to trust all your information to google, in the same way we trust banks with our money. But when I used Google Checkout to pay for a new laptop recently, instead of paypal, it occurred to me that many of us already do.

Where’s our unified communications Google? I know we can get voicemail through the mobile email, but surely that’s only the start.

The way I look at it, the term ‘Mobile Presence’ seems to be a contradiciton in terms. 

I originally read this linked article and found myself thinking the issue was very complicated. And now, having mulled it over in terms of whether this technology was something I would actually ‘use’ or not, I’m skeptical.

Leaving aside the ability to see if someone is on the phone or not….till another time at any rate…

My first thought was;

Because I always have my mobile with me does that mean I’m now always present?

Trouble is - I don’t want to instant message via a mobile phone if I can help it - as I’m usually busy being mobile and away from my desk.

Looking back, ‘Presence’ was coined by the Instant Messaging PC client, and therefore, to say I am ‘present’ actually means that I am at my PC desktop and contactable. Not being present means I have wandered off and am not going to respond.

In my book, this concept can’t be extended to a mobile phone, so ‘mobile presence’ is a misnomer. OK, enough with the re-iteration already already.

The meaning of Presence, has started to morph into ‘availability and willingness to interact’, and to that end a lot of discussion is being put into handling contacts, grouping them, and puttings rules against VIP versus double glazing people. And the bottom line is, I’m not sure about this.

So, in the instance I am away from my desk, I would pitch my voicemail against ‘presence’ technology as being most useful. Give me a call, and I’ll decide on the spot whether I’ll answer you or not, and, unlike a rules engine, I won’t ever get it wrong.

So, if I really can’t talk to you now, then leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as it is convenient. Of course, leaving a voicemail should in itself move the conversation onwards, so this isn’t a waste of either your or mine time.

I think that’s a lot easier than maintaining a presence engine via some small mobile screen that you forget to check every ten minutes, don’t you?

So couldn’t the communications industry just define Presence to mean Whether I’m at my desktop, or not?

It’s not perfect, so perhaps we should think more about how conversations are initiated, a more formal process that simulates that so repetitive IM, “can we talk?” 

That permission element is going to be all important

The boss sat at the back of the room, full of 12(!) people, and said

“Because we deal with a lot of people in Continental Europe, who naturally have a wide variety of accents, we would like our colleagues here to test your speech driven auto attendant system”.

I could barely understand them when they called and asked for my colleagues on our live AVST system,

However, when the boss then asked them to “now put on an accent”…. it was all I could do to keep my head out of my hands.

It was a bit surreal watching two normal looking fellas making faces as they put on weird accents probably never heard on the planet - but, we got through it with flying colours!! (thank you Nuance)

Whenever I go into a company to talk about Speech Recognition products, I know I will quickly be into the ‘live demo’.

People don’t yet believe the technology exists in a form they can seriously use, and so calling in is the best way of proving the concept, and having some fun, before moving on to the more serious questions.

Showing instead of telling usually works so much better.

The demo is also the best way to give yourself a coronary, as there are just so many factors waiting to trip you up.

So what can go wrong?

Unlike my hands free in the car, the boardroom hands free phone may be of questionable quality - you become a master at tapping the phone in case the non duplex phone clips what you’re saying.

Despite warnings, people in the room tend to get excited about the recognition and start babbling loudly around the handsfree phone as soon as they hear the first accepted command. Before you can say ‘pause session’ the speech system is still listening, and tends not to expect any of the following:

• ‘blimey, it really works’,
• ‘how does it handle swearing?’,
• ‘how long does it take to train?’
• or whatever

On this particular occasion I knew I was in trouble immediately - but once the system proved itself I started feeling brave.

Pushing it to the limit, I used my loud speaker mobile on the desk instead and called in to access my messages, contacts, calendar and handling settings as this never fails to impress,

At Which Point

- the boss jumped out of his seat and whacked up the air conditioning onto full blast. “This is just like being hands free in the car isn’t it”…he said smugly, over the din.

He looked so disappointed when it coped ok - I still don’t understand why really.

Perhaps there was a receptionist that had interviewed very well. Sometimes there is just a hidden agenda :-). Proud but without an order, it was a hollow victory.

Unified Communications as a concept has a number of interfaces around which technologies are consolidating

Interfaces are converging around Messaging, Real Time Conversations and incoming call handing - complemented by applications being ‘enabled’ for communications.

Speech Recognition (the user independent variety) is another method to access Unified Communications technologies, usually from a mobile telephone, but being new, it is difficult for companies to position different solutions and make buying decisions.

So, one of the first questions I would put forward is ‘how many speech interfaces does a user want?’

Do they want to call in and access and handle messages and contacts, call another system to set up their voice/emailbox and change their incoming call handling settings, and perhaps yet another number to access their Speech enabled application. Perhaps a different server could run the speech driven company directory transfers?

Perhaps not.

Each speech platform will have it’s own ‘logic’ in terms of users interfacing, so learning more than one will likely be more than users can stand. This should be a way of filtering out some one trick ponies!

Unified Communications is taking us away from being reliant on feature rich telephony  devices like proprietary IP Telephony handsets and corporate mobile devices.

I’ve been looking at the concept for a while and On Accenture’s Trivergence blog, Andy Zimmerman coins the “trivergence” phrase, I can link to the explanation.

The reason I picked it up is that one of the key aspects of this trivergence (type of convergence) is to abstract a user interface to any application, away from the devices that you use, onto the network, and accessible via the PC screen or browser.

To a degree I guess this has been happening since the demise of the typewriter, but this will continue into disruptive communications solutions. Perhaps its why Gartner warn against buying handsets with screens.

As an example, the Ipod is easier to stuff full of music when using iTunes, rather than navigating and downloading from a website from a screen measuring 2 inches square.

Further, he relates

About two years ago, when Accenture’s Innovation Center was researching Trivergence, we mocked up an application that transferred certain cellphone controls from the handset to a PC display, which we dubbed a SoftPanel. In focus groups, cellphone users were asked to perform a set of tasks (managing contact lists, sifting through voice mail, buying ring tones, etc.) first on the cellphone itself and then on the SoftPanel.

The results were unambiguous. Nearly 100% of respondents said they preferred using the SoftPanel for these tasks. It was clear to almost everyone that there should be a seamless integration between the PC and the handset – with each device doing what it does best, and doing it on a regular basis.

 Also he says

one of Accenture’s analysts sent me these comments from a discussion on cellphone usability:

“Mobile devices are still not intuitive enough for average users to navigate, and consumers do not have the time or interest to go through carriers’ service catalogues to figure out just exactly what is available to them.

“As carriers continue to layer on services, discovery mechanisms on mobile handsets are critical to enabling users to access desired applications and services with the simple touch of a button.”

Personally, I use Google Reader because I can access the pre-configured reader and articles when on the train through a browser. It is an example of application control being browser based rather than being developed specifically for each device individually. The application persists across whicever device I happen to be using, and this only succeeds if the application server is browser based.

Another post from the Trivergence blog, around Grand Central, shows how a very feature rich call control of an inbound telephony service has been abstracted from telephone devices all together by being browser based.

We’ve all used dozens of phone devices in our time, perhaps future phones will be simpler instead of more complex.

When considering Speech Recognition as an interface for anything, just think about how it is to be used, by whom and where they’re calling from.

Having used Speech Recognition to access Exchange email, calendar, contacts, my CallXpress voicemail and corporate directory for the last two years (we had Exchange 2007 functionality 2 years early from AVST), I have to say that it has been a learning experience.

The first thing to relate is that it is often more comfortable as a solitary activity.

Somehow, you can hear your own voice change when talking to a machine.

It is the trepdiation that you’ll forget the right phrase to use, along with slower and louder speech, which means you end up sounding almost like ‘British person talking to foreign person’. Like an idiot in other words, and after a very short while, a self conscious idiot.

The worst thing is knowing that any slips will result in you having to repeat yourself.

Repeating oneself (no pun intended) is irritating to have to do, not to mention the fact it also attracts instant attention from anybody around you - and thus aptly demonstrates to your colleagues that even a dumb machine can’t be bothered to listen to you.

The funny thing is, most people wait for the machine to finish talking even if they know they can interrupt and they know what the machine is going to say. Such manners abound in the UK, even to inanimate objects that you can’t see!

If you are in a car on your own, this technology is fantastic, hands free and driving licence points saving and reduces home login time sorting through email because you deleted them somewhere near Oxford.

Trust me though, using it in public is about as cool as walking along with a £10 bluetooth headset over the ear.

This link is to a very neat article (thanks Alec) , which points out that the result of worker mobility and remote working, is a growth in conference calls and a demand for presence solutions.

There is a year’s worth of telephone call log data from Cap Gemini’s 9,000 strong organisation to base this on, and so excellent data to work with.

Replacement of ‘face to face’ meetings with an increase in telephone calls and audio conferencing is an obvious one, but also, it is argued, because 80 percent of calls end up in voicemail this is driving users to pre-book calls in advance, driving costs up through multiple calls into conferencing bridges from mobile phones.

Presence is described as bound to emerge as a key element of any provider of communications services.

Trouble is, I’m positive that the Telco and mobile companies don’t see a problem with growth of calls and conferencing! “More conference calls”, “paying for calls twice” must be music to the ears.

   Solid Gold

 In fact, any presence solution, resulting in less calls going to voicemail, and less calls overall, must be an unattractive proposition for the Telco or Mobile Operator.

It will probably fall on companies to implement their own Unified Commmunications solutions, (he says hopefully) making presence enabled, on net, conference calls free of charge, together with binding their own mobile calls to the enterprise to reduce costs.