Talk-Now and the Victorian era calling card
Susan Crawford writes about the practice of leaving cards — the politeness of a another age where people presented a request for an appointment of some kind, and the expectation was a response, positive or negative.
The calling card experience is a metaphor we have consciously imitated with iotum Talk-Now, but modified for modern times. You can check the Talk-Now application from your BlackBerry handset, see whether the people you need to speak with are available, and make a request (if they’re not). The other sees your request in an incoming queue (labelled “Waiting to talk to me”), and can make a choice to take the call now, or not. The iotum Relevance Engine performs the function of the butler — it makes judgement calls about how to represent you to various individuals, based on the relationship you have with that person.
May 31st, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Wouldn’t this also be useful to mediate online realtionships as well.
Increasingly I’m reading that one of the issues with all social software is that it asssumes all relationships are equal - when in fact people manage interaction much as the relevance engine appears to - depending on situtation recent history upcoming events etc.
These issues increase as social software goes mobile - as online and physical collide - in the same way that calls can be an interuption or welcome - depending on the situtation.