Mobile presence dial-tone

The word is out about Jaiku. Some speak of “mobile social networking”, other mention “rich presence”. I would simply call it another perfect example of XMPP’s extreme flexibility and adaptability.

Jaiku combines a well conceived Symbian client with an XMPP back-end, and a web based front end service. The service is sleek and easy to register with, offer a simple and uncluttered interface, and all the necessary scripts to include your mobile presence in any web page. The client, for the time being limited to Nokia Series 60 Second Edition phones, integrates cleverly with the phone directory, converting it into a “presence enabled” directory. The client is also aware of many phone events and functions, such as the calendar. It appears the Jaiku’s team has slightly extended the XMPP presence stanzas in order to accommodate a richer set of information to includes

… an IM-style away line, your phone profile (ring volume, vibrate), location (country, city/region, neighborhood), Bluetooth devices around, upcoming calendar events, and the duration how long your phone has been idle.

Although the information released in the enhanced presence states may be perceived as disclosing a potentially large amount of your privacy, the service gives a perfect example of presence as the new dial tone. Presence being embedded in the phone directory, it is displayed whenever you want to place a call to one of your contacts.

This further reinforce, in my opinion, the advantages of XMPP. XMPP is a presence based protocol. And Jaiku is a perfect example of a non IM XMPP application natively presence enabled.

Technorati Tags: XMPP, Jabber, Presence, Antecipate