News and views on IM, Presence and RTC Technologies

I have moved ... again :-S

2006-02-20T22:34:00Z

Last move ... I promise :-)

If you want to continue to read my blog then change your bookmarks etc to the following http://blogs.technet.com/markdea

Communicator Mobile available within the next 60 days

2006-02-15T20:45:00Z

During Steve Ballmers keynote at 3GSM today he announced that Communicator Mobile will be released to manufacturing within the next 60 days.

I have been using Communicator Mobile for quite some time. With the release of Communicator Mobile we will cover one of the last places where you would want to communicate with people and edit your presence i.e. Desktop, Web and now Mobile.

This is Flexible Working at its best !

BBC Backstage Bot updated!

2006-02-13T14:51:00Z

I received an email recently from the creator of the BBC Backstage Bot telling me that he has overhauled the bot and it should now be a little quicker to respond than before.

If you have not already done so, add bbcbackstage@hotmail.com to your MSN Buddy list and give it a try !

Free tools now availabile for building Messenger BOTS/Activities

2006-02-11T01:48:00Z

If you have ever thought of creating a BOT for MSN Messenger then now is a better time than ever.

Conversagent, a Messenger platform partner, has decided to make their SDK for building IM applications BOTS and Activities within MSN Messenger available for free for six months with a specificed level of use.

For those that are interested take a look here where you can find more details

Let me know how you get on and I might even be able to showcase your solution here on the blog !

The place where you can get everything ... and now VOIP

2006-01-20T17:22:00Z

Imagine this, your sent an email from your 'better half' asking you to collect a few things on the way home from work. Here is the shopping list :-

Eggs
Beans
Milk
Bread
Mobile Phone
Fridge
Mortgauge
Car insurance....
.....
and voice over IP solution

so... where would you go ?. The answer is of course Tescos!.

It has recently been announced that Tescos will be adding Voice of IP to the long list of the items that they sell in their store. This is a great example of voice over IP telecommunications becoming mainstream and its only a matter of time before the public, and therefore business, starting thinking about VOIP more seriously.

Goggle Talk federates with Jabber based clients

2006-01-19T19:22:00Z

From the article posted here it looks like Google Talk is expanding its reach by allowing Google Talk customer to connect to Jabber based users, greatly increasing the number of people that Google Talk users can talk with.

More interestingly though is the very last paragraph that mentions its next move is to make Google Talk SIP-speaking. A wise move I feel as they rest of the world slowly moves over to SIP as the protocol of choice.

Communicator Web Access Documentation

2006-01-19T17:50:00Z

After receiving an internal email I thought it might be useful to provide some links to Communicator Web Access documentation on the Microsoft.com site

Communicator Web Access brief document
Communicator Web Access Deployment Resources - Including release notes, planning and deployment guide, lab quick start and information on the MOM 2005 Management Pack

Symantec to Aquire IMLogic

2006-01-04T12:19:00Z

Yesterday Symantec announced that they aquired IMLogic to broaden their antivirus and compliance suite to include IM platforms.

I personally think this is a very interesting acquisition as it shows that antivirus companies such a Symantec realise that as well as covering the desktop and email they also need to cover the instant messaging space as an increasing number of virus' are being transmitted through peoples buddy lists rather than their address books.

There is more information on http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2006/01/03/ap2426076.html?partner=alerts including some figures from IMLogic that suggests that virus and worms threats rose 846% this December when compared to last December.

If you would like more information about securing your messaging platform, including Live Communication Server, then might I recommend you take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/solutions/security/sybari.mspx where you will find more information. I was actually in a meeting with these guys yesterday and as well as having a good understanding of the problems IM platforms face, they also have a great understanding of virus' and security in general.

IM Mash Up !

2005-12-30T14:45:00Z

I wanted to interrupt the holiday period with this quick post about the 'IM Mash Up' that Todd Biggs has drawn to my attention.

I am afraid there are only a few days to go but for I would recommend taking a look at www.worldsbestapp.com and seeing whats there even if you are not going to get a chance to knock something together.

Put simply, MSN are running a competition to create MSN Messenger applications similar to the Encarta ones I mentioned in a previous posting using their MSN Messenger Activity API. The lucky winner of the competition will walk away with an Alienware Area 51m 7700 mobile desktop, how cool is that !

Even if you are not interested in creating something of your own, take a look at the 'App Gallery' which contains lots of interesting and cool applications. My personal favourites are 'Live Translator' which translates conversations from one language to another and a Sudoku game. There is also a section for Games that I have not had a chance to look through yet.

If you want to know more take a look at http://www.programmableweb.com/ which appears to have lots of information on mash ups and in particular has some information on the MSN Messenger API at http://www.programmableweb.com/api/MSNMessenger?pwsession=ace31971ec9381b1b22f7439bb65dfc8

With that I will wish you a happy new year and see you in 2006 !

Merry Christmas

2005-12-25T18:58:00Z

Just finished tucking into our Christmas lunch so I thought I would spend a few minutes to wish everyone out there a very merry christmas and a happy new year.

I am out of the country for the next week so no posts from me over the xmas period. That said, I am looking forward to an exciting year ahead, Real Time Collaboration technologies is going to be the next big thing in 2006 and I will be there to write about it !

Cya in the New Year !

Communicator Web Access RTMs

2005-12-15T15:42:00Z

On Tuesday we announced the release to manufacturing of Communicator Web Access. There is more information here on CWA but in a nutshell think of it as web based client for LCS, allowing users to gain access to the presence information within LCS on anything with a browser.

I have been using this for quite some time and it looks very similar to Office Communicator 2005 and at a quick glance its hard to tell which is which.

Most important of all is that its free ! There is no extra cost to use this as long as you have paid for the CALs already.

More information on bots....

2005-12-06T21:07:00Z

After my last posting I got an email from Todd Biggs who is a Senior Product Manager at MSN. He has kindly supplied me with a list of other IM bots you might be interested in. I have not managed to try all of them myself but I think it proves the point that conversations over IM don’t have to be with a real person, they can be used as a means of obtaining information from automated systems

encarta@conversagent.com - A BOT that uses the Microsoft Encarta database to answer your questions and uses the activity window to provided you with more detailed rich content on the subject.
smarterchild@hotmail.com - A classic and very comprehensive chat BOT.
espbilly@msn.com -A quirky BOT that shows you videos, perhaps you’ll see your future?
yellowpagesdemo@hotmail.com - Yellow pages in IM. Find what you’re looking for near you.
msngiftguide@hotmail.com - Find the perfect holiday gift for that someone special.
blabla@chatman.nl - A Dutch chat BOT.
ibuddy077@lineage.co.kr - A BOT that talks about the Lineage game and has an interactive Activity.
indeedjobs@hotmail.com - Find that job that you’ve been looking for.
mindy@botmetro.net - A very good natural language chat BOT
amazon@insidec.com - Shop online with Amazon

Many thanks to Todd for providing this list. For those reading this blog, feel free to feedback on your experiences with these bots and more importantly give me a shout if you manage to find any more so I can share them with the rest of the readers.

Interesting use of Bots

2005-11-30T00:57:00Z

When you get a chance, add the following two MSN contacts to your contacts list

The former is basically a bot that links to some of the Encarta knowledgebase and brings you back the answers. Quite a cool little tool if you want to get a quick answer to something and it will even point you in the direction of the Encarta website if it doesnt know the answer

The latter is a link to the BBC tv listings. Start off by saying 'hello' and then just follow the prompts to get back the information you need.

These are two excellent examples of IM bots and I think it would be great to see more of these in years to come things like directory enquiries, train operators (to see when the next train is coming leaving for Reading for example), NHS (to suppliment the NHS Direct phone service) and cinemas for film listings to name but a few.

Feel free to post comments on any other suggestions or things you would like to see this used for !

New home and a bit of an explanation

2005-11-29T23:19:00Z

Well, it didnt take long at all to find a new home and with some help from the guys in Redmond I managed to keep all of my postings too.

If you are new to my blog then you might be wondering why a load of posts all have the same dates. To cut a long story short, I gave up my old blog so that the RTC product group can use it. I transfered all my previous postings over to here so anyone new reading doesnt feel they missed out :-)

If you are not new to this blog then is business a usual from here. I recommended taking a look at the RTC Product Groups blog (link on my site) also though !

Enjoy ... and I hope I have not confused things too much :-)

Microsoft RTC group makes another interesting acquisition...

2005-11-29T23:18:00Z

..... my blog :-)

Over the last week or so I have been talking with some of the guys over in Redmond who would like to take over this blog and start two way communication between customer/partners and the product group rather than just via the field. I personally think this is a great idea, it can only make the product better and I am surprised its taken this long.

I have been assured that once I find a new home for my blog that not only will they create a link to my new home but also keep to with the spirit of why this blog was created in the first place. As I said at the beginning, the purpose of this blog is to hopefully educate and stimulate the minds of those who are not yet convinced and to further the interest and knowledge of those that have already taken the leap into the world of Real Time Collaboration.