19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Infoscience
Presence in Communication Spaces
Prof. Dr. Konrad Froitzheim
(frz@gmx.net) and Peter Schubert
TU Freiberg, Institut fuer Informatik, Germany
The notion of virtual presence as it was developed in Web-based communication
systems such as CoBrow or Hypernix measures presence as distance between surfers.
Presence is then visualized on the user interface in a special window or as
an overlay of the Web page. It is natural to use this presence information to
manually or automatically start other communication systems such as text and
voice chat, telephony, or even video conferencing. Current presence computation
does however not include the availability of a person to other means of communication
such as telephony, chat, or videoconferenceing.
The generalization of presence relates strength of presence to location and
availabilty. This availability depends on factors such as type of work, day
and time of day, calendar, type and purpose of the required communication, presence
of other people, physical location, social factors, and even traffic conditions
in the case of mobile users. It basically measures how much the intended communication
partner (the callee) would be disturbed by the call attempt.
To better denote the difference,
we call this concept presence in 'Communication Spaces'. In our project Presence
in Telephony Space (PiTS) we are developing a theoretical notion of presence
expressed as an Algebra combined with signal processing and machine learning
algorithms. The objective is to collect the factors determining this presence,
develop methods to measure or at least deduce these factors, to compute presence,
and to integrate this information into call setup, dynamic directories, and
the virtual worlds of advanced internet services.
Together with dynamic directories and new methods of searching, presence in
communication spaces will lead to innovative means to find communication partners
and interact with them in a less intrusive manner.