Unified Messaging...

This is a test of posting to my new more on that later blog on
blogger. But rather than just send some dummy text, I thought I'd
share some thoughts from days of yore...

When i first started consulting (actually was in training) with Price
Waterhouse, I got to think about unified messaging. I had just gotten
a paid online fax service, so i could get travel info faxes by email
without paying hotels a buck a page - which easily paid for the
monthly service a few times over at the time. How things have changed!

Anyway, I began to think about our communications in terms of the FORM
of the media and the MACHINE that presents it. This was in about 1997,
so cell phones were not yet mainstream, and even internet access was
fairly new to many. Fax machines ruled, and each business had their
own kind of email. Ours was lotus notes, and I had my good ol'
earthlink account. I spent a while in a break room mapping this idea
out on a huge whiteboard- thinking that what we really needed was
multiple ways for the message to go in, and a machine/app in the
middle that would convert it in any way that could be converted, and
send it out to the recipient.

Let's see if i can do this in text - rough draft.

INPUTS      take the  form:
                                  DEVICE

fax                     IMAGE, but can convert to voice
                                    fax, phone, screen
photo                 IMAGE, but can be described in voice
                               fax, screen, sound player
text                    IMAGE, but can be voiced
                                      fax, text, screen, sound player
video                  IMAGE, SOUND, can partially represent, VIDEO
                        fax representative, text representative,
screen, sound player
audio                 SOUND, convert to TEXT
                                  text representation, sound player

So for example, anything that can take in a scan is basically making
an image, which can then be output to anything that can output an
image.

As I try to recreate this im reminded that the edges of what devices
do what are blurring, so it may be easier to think about this all in
terms of senses - we see stuff- either static or moving, either images
or text. We hear stuff - either real voice, simulated voice, or other
sounds. These sounds may or may not go with text, video, or images,
and vice-versa. So a rich output device would allow for video, or
text, or images, or sound, or all of them. A rich input device would
take in all those forms. A rich communications application would
seamlessly take in any form and output it to all available forms.

So you send me a fax of a printed construction quote- I want: a
picture of the scan, a voice message with the gist of the content of
the image, a video that zooms in on any details, and... what else? IT
doesn't seem so fancy anymore, now that we can attach anything to
email, have a video chat from email, and so on- but in reality, we
still have all these barriers- the best we're doing with high-dollar
scanner/printers at work is taking printed docs and turning them into
multipage pdf's... pretty weak, actually.

I look forward to apps that tie this stuff all together better.

d.i.

--
D.I. von Briesen
God is Greater

--
D.I. von Briesen
God is Greater