The Electric Wand : IM

Updated LifeCam software

Ewan — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:22:00 GMT

It's not exactly "news", since the Microsoft LifeCam web-camera driver & software package was updated a few months ago, but I only picked up the latest version the other day and it brought a few smiles when playing with it today, during a call with James Akrigg.

The LifeCam software does real-time manipulation of the video coming from the camera, and should be visible in any application that uses the webcam (eg IM, Live Meeting etc). A few of the effects are potentially useful - like the one which blurs the background but keeps the face in focus, but most are just silly: some hilariously so.

What's kind-of amazing about the software is the facial tracking it can do; either to zoom in and out as you move around (and follow your head movements), or to attach effects to your face or the background, all in real time.

My favourite funny effect is the "big mouth" one :)

I can't for the life of me think of a business reason for using this, but it certainly raised a laugh ...

Custom presence states in Communicator, reprise

Ewan — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:37:00 GMT

A quick follow on to my post the other day about having custom presence states in Office Communicator 2007 - the Communicator Deployment Guide has a couple of minor errors which could frustrate you, as one commenter pointed out, and I've had comments from a couple of people who've had trouble getting it working.

There may be some gotchas with the XML file you create, too (especially if you accidentally end up with an invalid XML file as I did at first attempt). A tip would be to check that your XML will render in Internet Explorer OK (by double-clicking) - if it doesn't, then Office Communicator isn't going to like it. Also, you'll need to make sure you use the correct language codes - English being 1033, something that's not all that obvious in the documentation

Here's my XML - if you want to, just copy this to Notepad, save it as OCSSTATUS.XML and make sure the URL in your registry points to the location where you put that XML file (see below...)

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<customStates xmlns=
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/09/2005/communicator/customStates"
xmlns:xsi=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation=
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/09/2005/communicator/customStates ">
       <customState ID="1" availability="online">
              <activity LCID="1033">Working from Home</activity>
       </customState>
       <customState ID="2" availability="online">
              <activity LCID="1033">Fine and Dandy</activity>
       </customState>
       <customState ID="3" availability="busy">
              <activity LCID="1033">Meeting with Customer</activity>
       </customState>
       <customState ID="4" availability="do-not-disturb">
              <activity LCID="1033">Presenting and Projecting</activity>
       </customState>
</customStates>

To add the value to the registry, either do it manually or else copy the following block of text to Notepad and save it as OCSSTATUS.REG file, then double-click on that to import to the registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator]
"CustomStateURL"=file:///d:/software/applications/ocsstatus.xml

Note the format of the URL - unless you're picking up the XML file from a network resource, it will be a file: type, but the correct formatting of that URL is to use three forward slashes before the drive letter.

Hope this helps!

Custom presence states in Office Communicator

Ewan — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:22:38 GMT

I just discovered how to modify presence states in Office Communicator 2007: it's documented in the Office Communicator Deployment Guide (page 21, if you're interested), and allows for either the managed deployment of Communicator with additional corporate-set presence states, or if a user is savvy enough to do it themselves, they could have some fun...

The custom states appear like shown in this screenshot (the one in the deployment guide seems to be in error - it doesn't actually show any custom states), and you can have up to 4 of them and set which of the coloured statuses you want to apply to each of your defined presence states.

I'd originally noticed this was possible when I glanced down at the beautiful screen on my newly-acquired "Tanjay" phone (as shown on Gurdeep's desk here, along with a bunch of other UC devices, and akin to the LG-Nortel 8540), and I saw Adrian's status was "Delivering ..."

... which set me off to find out how he'd done it. Note my own status is also displayed on the Tanjay, and updates in real time...

Identity & presence: the key to anyone's Unified Communications strategy

Ewan — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:55:33 GMT

I spend a lot of time talking with customers about what Microsoft is doing with various new technologies, mostly involving or revolving around the Unified Communications stuff with OCS and Exchange. It's really interesting to see how many people just "get" the point of UC technology, whereas others are either blind to its potential, or even doing the fingers-in-ears, shut-eyes, repeating "no, no, no" denial that a lot of this stuff is coming whether they like it or not.

I don't mean that software companies are somehow going to compel everyone to adopt it, more that end-users themselves will be expecting to use technology at work which they have grown used to at home. For several years now, it's been typical that people have better IT at home than they'd have in the office - from faster PCs, bigger flat screens, to the software they use - it's exactly this kind of user who has driven the growth of services like Skype, and possibly helped shape the way enterprises will look at telecoms & communications in the future.

Various pieces of research, such as Forrester Groups' 2006 paper on "Generation Y" types (as reported at TMC.Net), predict that people who were born in the 1980s and beyond, are adopting technologies into their lives faster than previously... and as those same "Millenials" are making their way into the workforce, they're bringing their expectations with them, and possibly facing the "Computer says no" attitude that some, er, older, IT staff might still be harbouring.

Instant Messaging concerns

It's already been reported that teens use IM more than email so it seems inevitable that IM will come to the enterprise one way or another. Some enterprises have turned something of a blind eye to "in the cloud" IM services such as Windows Live/MSN Messenger, AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk etc. Others have actively shut down access to these services by blocking firewall ports. Both of these approaches will need, at some point, to be re-evaluated or formalised through acceptable use policies etc - just as businesses in the past didn't give users internet access or even email, due to concerns that they'd just waste all their time chatting, or the threat to security of opening up to the world.

In reality, users will waste time on IM initially, just like they'll possibly spend worktime surfing the web or playing Solitaire on their PC, but sooner or later they'll get over the novelty and start using the technology to be productive, and even if they still "play" during working hours, the net effect will be positive.

IM as email reduction strategy

Many people agree that they get too much email, and that culturally, email is used when it would be better to pick up the phone or talk to someone face-face. IM can reduce the volume of email sent, not just for the disposable communication (the "have you got a minute?" type) but for the fact that people who are not online at the time, don't tend to get IM. It's all too easy to blast an email out to a group, asking for help - now, when the people in that group who've been out of the office next log in, they'll get your request ... even though your problem may well have been solved by now. That just doesn't happen with IM, and some customers I've talked with estimate that adoption of enterprise IM sees a >50% drop in internal email volumes.

Presence is the magic ingredient

What makes IM useful is the "presence": the knowledge of who, in the company (even, possibly, people you haven't ever added to a contact list like you'd need to do in the public services), is available and in a position to respond to you. Cliff Saran of Computer Weekly wrote a blog post recently which was scathing of presence, but illustrates a fundamental lack of understanding of what it "is":

Yes it's fine to be able to know that someone is free, but it relies on the user having to update their Presence each time they walk over to the coffee machine, have a chat and a laugh with a colleague, go to the toilet, leave for the train, get home, go to the pub, have dinner, watch TV and go to bed.

-- "Microsoft's unified productivity killer", Cliff Saran, 28th August 2007

Sorry Cliff, but you're about as far wrong as it's possible to get without changing the subject entirely. The whole point of presence is that it's something the user shouldn't have to worry about. And if they want to, they can. Culturally, some people won't want to use the technology at all, which is fine... though sooner or later they may realise they're losing out, and come back to the party.

I start my PC up, and if it finds a network, Office Communicator logs in and sets me to be online. When my Outlook calendar says I'm busy, my presence changes to "In a meeting". When I pick up the phone, it's "In a call", all done automatically.

When I lock my screen (as I'd do - WindowsKey+L - any time I'm away from my desk for more than a few seconds), my status goes to "Away", and restores when I log back in. If I just walked away without locking, after 5 minutes, I'd be "Inactive" then 10 minutes later, it would be "Away" (at least that's the default timeouts and behaviour... they can be tweaked). And all the while, by clicking that big coloured button in the top left, I can over-ride the automatically set presence and do it myself. Or even sign out.

As well as controlling what my own status is (and by extension, how phone calls will be routed to me and when), I can also set what level of information I'm prepared to share with others - from allowing select people to interrupt me even when I've set "Do not Disturb", to blocking people from even seeing that you're online altogether.

Presence and UC telephony

Look at the strategies of any IT or telecoms company who's involved in this space: finding a user (based on some identity, probably not just their phone number) and seeing their presence is a key part of the value of UC. Making it integrated into other applications and devices the user is working with, and giving the user the choice to use it or not use it as they see fit, is vital to the success of presence being adopted and embraced (rather than rejected by users as big brother-ism or invasion of privacy).

OCS2007 trial edition now available

Ewan — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:37:27 GMT

If you want to get your hands on trial software for the recently-released Office Communications Server 2007 and its client, Office Communicator 2007, then you're in luck...

OCS trial download (both Standard & Enterprise editions)
Communicator trial

Bear in mind that these trials are for tyre-kicking and lab testing only - don't put them into full blown production. They will also expire in 180 days, though can be upgraded to the released and fully supported code.

Living the dream with Office Communicator 2007

Ewan — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:06:03 GMT

I've been a long-time fan of instant messaging and pervasive "presence", especially the cultural changes it allows organisations to make in order to communicate and collaborate better. As a result, I've been really interested to see what's been happening with Office Communications Server (the soon-to-be-released successor to Live Communications Server).

Around 6 weeks ago, I joined an internal MS deployment of full-voice OCS, meaning that my phone number was moved onto the OCS platform so now I'm not using the PBX at all. It's been a remarkably cool experience in a whole lot of ways, but it really hits home just how different the true UC world might be, when you start to use it in anger.

I've been working from home today, and the fact that my laptop is on the internet (regardless of whether I'm VPNed into the company network), the OCS server will route calls to my PC and simultaneously to the mobile, so I can pick them up wherever. As more and more people are using OCS internally, it's increasingly the norm to just hit the "Call" button from within Office Communicator (the OCS client) or from Outlook, and not really care which number is going to be called.

Here, I was having a chat with Brett and since we both have video cameras, I just made a video call - I was at home so just talked to the laptop in a speakerphone type mode, Brett was in the office so used his wired phone, which was plugged into the PC:

(this device is known internally as a "Catalina" and functions mainly as a USB speaker/microphone, but also has some additional capabilities like a message waiting light, a few hard-buttons, and a status light that shows the presence as currently set on OCS).

It's a bit weird when you start using the phone and realise that you're not actually going near a traditional PBX environment for a lot of the interaction. Calling up voice mail, as delivered by Exchange Unified Messaging, is as easy as pressing the "call voice mail" button in Communicator - no need to provide a PIN or an extension number, since the system already knows who I am and I've already authenticated by logging in to the PC.

When I use this, the "call" goes from my PC to OCS, then from the OCS server directly to the Exchange server, all as an IP data stream and without touching the traditional TDM PBX that we still have here. A third party voice gateway allows for me to use OCS to call other internal people who are still homed on the PBX system, and to make outbound calls.

Microsoft's voice strategy of "VoIP As You Are" starts to make a lot of sense in this environment - I could deploy technology like OCS and Exchange UM and start getting immediate benefit, without needing to rip & replace the traditional phone system, at least not until it's ready for obsolescence.

Here's an idea of what kind of system is in place - for more information, check out Paul Duffy's interview with ZDNet's David Berlind.

Live Writer beta 2 releases

Ewan — Thu, 31 May 2007 11:06:24 GMT

I only really started blogging "properly" when Windows Live Writer (WLW) beta first shipped... it's been a really user-friendly tool for blogging, for a whole load of reasons.

The WLW team has just shipped a new beta which has a nice UI polish, some great new features (like inline spell checking) and other interesting stuff like Sharepoint 2007 integration (since Sharepoint 2007 implements blogging).

Steve posted about this and other Live betas (Live Mail & Live Messenger).

ZDNet sings praises of Office Communications Server beta

Ewan — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 17:52:40 GMT

Like probably millions of other people, I get the daily ZDNet Tech Update Today (since long before RSS brought news feeds to the masses...) and was floored a little by David Berlind's column today. I think David's a good commentator - normally sails between the points of sycophancy and fundamentalism that some of the other ZDNet columnists sometimes exhibit.

The column today is about the release of beta 3 of Office Communications Server and Office Communicator 2007, which has now gone live. David's comment on the whole thing:

If there will be an amazingly compelling reason to go all-Microsoft for your office suite ... your document sharing infrastructure ... your e-mail and scheduling system ... your data/voice conferencing ... and your instant messaging, then Office Communicator is it.
So deeply and contextually can Office Communicator's DNA be integrated into the rest of Microsoft's solutions that there is probably no other glue in all of Microsoft's portfolio that so elegantly demonstrates the company's strategic vision for making knowledge workers more productive at what they do.

Wow. I think he likes it!

You can't ignore a ringing phone

Ewan — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:47:19 GMT

It's funny when you look back a few years to see just how communications technology has changed - remember when you might have asked (or been asked), "are you on the phone?"... meaning not, "are you using the phone" but "do you have a phone at home"......(read more)