Availabot... standing at attention when your buddies come online
Tags :Sametime Real-Time Collaboration Gateway Availabot
Apparently Carl talked about this months ago, I just read about it, :-)
A company in the UK has taken presence notification to a new level through Availabot. Instead of getting a pop-up, sound or notice that your AOL/iChat buddy has come online, you have a puppet that stands up from a connected USB port. You need as many ports as buddies you want to stand at attention.
Availabot plugs into your computer USB, stands to attention when your chat buddy comes online, and falls down when they go away. It's a presence-aware, peripheral-vision USB toy
Apparently you can preload them with your data and even have them customized to look like yourself. Interesting concept for handing out at conferences
Availabot stores the IM details of the friend it represents in the puppet itself. That means that you can buy a few, load them with your own IM screen name and service, and give them out like business cards to your closest contacts.
It seems to be ready for Mac with Windows on the way. Could you see the overzealous CIO with a room of 1000 of these to see how many employees are online in Sametime working with a Sametime Gateweay hooked up? I found they even have a youTube video of it working. Now that theory I just had really gets some humor.
blog comments powered by Disqus
On Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 by Chris Miller
