19^th 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.