Location based automation ...

I have been playing around with some location based automation in IFTTT recently. I am sure some of you who follow some of my different feeds may have noticed. In itself, there is nothing new to report. But in my fevered and somewhat technical mind, there seems to me to be the potential for many organisations to capitalise on 'presence' awareness.

The tool available via IFTTT, currently works on iPhone; ironically I don't see any android resources, but I am sure that if I did a search I would find similar.

However, getting back on topic. I work in a culture that has a dispersed team. Often you want to know if someone is 'around for a chat'. That informal and quite essential process where coffee, ideas and opportunities evolve.

Options include the internal Lync chat, but relies on them being available at their desk to respond (not often the case on campus). Getting off rear and looking for them, phoning, leaving voice mail. To still discover that they are not in.

So, it is email (again) or the whim of an idea for a conversation disappears.

Yet, if there was a tool that told me when my preferred colleagues are near, now that would be interesting.

So, world that I blog into, is there one, am I mad for wanting this, or could we use the tools out there to make ourselves such a tool. 

Comments

  1. Nuno Guarda13 January 2014 at 18:00

    Foursquare has a feature that allows notifications to be send when a friend check in at the same place.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Teraknor13 January 2014 at 18:16

      Must admit i have avoided foursquare, not really wanting to be mayor of anything virtual ... does it all automatic 'checking in'?

      Delete
    2. Nuno Guarda13 January 2014 at 19:51

      I believe it doesn't directly, but I suppose there are apps that can do it. Regarding the mayorships, I believe they are focusing less than before on that :-)

      An alternative could be Google Location service (https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2998354?hl=en-GB). You can decide who to share with.

      Delete
    3. Teraknor13 January 2014 at 20:02

      looking at IFTTT I can push 'location' updates to a spreadsheet, in principle, I could tweet, facebook, parse the information into a tool. Cisco like the OU has a distributed workforce which could at times benefit from staff knowing when others are 'near'.

      Delete
    4. Teraknor13 January 2014 at 20:04

      As an additional thought, somewhere like the OU, the chances of everyone having the same device/platform is remote and even less likely that we will be issued devices to support the idea

      Delete
    5. Nuno Guarda13 January 2014 at 21:20

      I fully agree with you. Maybe that feature could be integrated on Cisco Jabber that already has a few "presence" features.

      I found an app called "Find My Friends" that is platform independents, or saying it differently, work across all major mobile platforms. The Location service from Google seems to work attached to Google+, so it should be available in various platforms too.

      Delete
  2. Unknown13 January 2014 at 18:29

    lync ( been using this on a droid, ), yammer, lotus notes "Sametime", cisco Jabber, they are all good ("Good"another good one), been using them all, but none of them tell me where they are unless I state, or if they are close by, you need to incoperate a GPS device with each system, ( you be would be made !)

    ReplyDelete

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