Subject: quantifying activity (was RE: [Simple] Extending <status> for pr esence)

From: "Peterson, Jon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 17:38:56 -0500

I do think that abstracting activity from any particular manner of
assessment is interesting and valuable, though undoubtably somewhat
challenging (it would be tough to come up with a formula for evaluating
whether I am more present on my telephone than my PC when the two use
different metrics). I am a little hesitant to tackle this in our initial
iteration of this work.

If we want a bucket for this in the current document, though, I wonder if
the relative 'priority' attribute of <contact> elements, which is already
specified in PIDF, would be a good place for quantified activity information
to be recorded. Presumably, one use of activity information would be to
discover the best contact in a set; it might be confusing to have a separate
parameter for this that conflicts with the existing priority parameter in
PIDF. It also already has the connotation that it can be set manually.

Jon Peterson
NeuStar, Inc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Rosenberg [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 1:22 PM
> To: Paul Kyzivat
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Simple] Extending <status> for presence
> 
[snip]
> 
> ON ACTIVITY
> 
> I'd next like to comment on what you call "activity". I think there is a
> need for some type of standardization to support this concept. There are
> several different ways in which the concept can be quantified:
> 
>    * the amount of TIME since the presentity last interacted 
> with the device
>    * the physical DISTANCE of the presentity from the device
>    * the PROBABILITY that a communications request to the device will be
> answered by the presentity
> 
> I think existing IM systems very much rely on the TIME definition.
> However, in my experience that definition is heavily tied to the concept
> of a PC application. On a cell phone, where the user normally does not
> interact with the device continously, this tends to a poor definition.
> For cell phones, the DISTANCE is a better measure, but even that is not
> neccesarily a good one. The phone may be near me, but its tucked away
> into a laptop bag and so I really am idle with respect to it, since I
> can't hear it or reach it.
> 
> Arguably, one approach is to separate the means for measuring "activity"
> or "idleness" from its representation. Using something like a
> probability, for example, would allow the metric to work across devices,
> and for it to be measured differently for different devices.
> 
> Another issue to be factored into the decision about how to represent
> idleness is how frequently it needs to be reported to the watcher in
> order to be useful. A time-based measure has the nice benefit that the
> watcher can continously know how long the presentity has been idle,
> simply by conveying the time of last activity in the presence 
> notifications.
> 
> One final point on activity. Some have stated that the defining
> characteristic of this status is that it is implicitly computed by the
> system. I disagree. I think it may be perfectly valid to set 
> it explicitly.
> 
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---

From: Jonathan Rosenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 02:14:30 -0500

inline.

> different metrics). I am a little hesitant to tackle this in our initial

I would be hesitant to try and boil the ocean with a general purpose 
metric that spans all devices. We just dont know how to do that now.

However, we do understand the metric in common use today - providing an 
idle indication for PC-based IM applications. I think it would be 
relatively easy to tackle that one. Really, I see just a small number of 
solutions:

1. add an activity status type withe values or IDLE and ACTIVE.
2. add a duration parameter to the existing basic status type, which 
indicates the time at which the user is considered idle if no update is 
provided.

> PIDF. It also already has the connotation that it can be set manually.

I don't see this is conflicting at all. THe priority conveys something 
quite different - which one of these is preferred by the presentity. 
Thats not the same as saying "this one hasn't been used by the 
presentity in a while". Indeed, it may be inactive but still preferred 
(say, because there is a store and forward app running there).

In fact, the active/idle indication makes sense for single device 
systems, where priority clearly doesnt help.

-Jonathan R.
-- 
Jonathan D. Rosenberg, Ph.D.                72 Eagle Rock Ave.
Chief Scientist                             First Floor
dynamicsoft                                 East Hanover, NJ 07936
[email-masked]                     FAX:   (973) 952-5050
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