a problem is that online awareness is the unix command who, the buddy list is part of a shell script with your user names, messaging is talk or irc, so this is probably a bad patent, beyond that irc has notify which is a form of buddy list and online awareness. the novelty of IM is in the way it is marketed through a different interface, i think this becomes clear when you start looking at ims like fire or everybuddy which operate across multiple standards sets, like irc, aim, yim, etc. In short, i would be running the prior art flag right now. btw do you have the patent number on this so i can turn it in to patent busters. On Tuesday, December 17, 2002, at 03:24 PM, Quentin (Gad) Jones wrote:

****************** The U.S. patent office has approved the ICQ inventors' patent on their technology for instant messaging via the Internet, HA'ARETZ reported. The office also granted a patent on the entrepreneurs' technology for the transmission of instant messages over cellular networks. America Online, which bought ICQ with its owner Mirabilis in 1998 for $400 million, can file patent infringement suits against Yahoo! and Microsoft which develop and market similar software for the transmission of instant messages, or, alternatively, can demand the companies pay royalties. An estimated 400 million people worldwide use instant messaging, about 135 million of them ICQ users. ******************

While the patent office often gets things wrong (e.g. the hoo ha about Amazon.com's one click patent) this approval does suggest that IM=(online awareness + buddy list + over TCP/IP protocal + messaging) and is something relatively new.

Quentin

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i don't see a substantial difference in either esp. when one gets to be a high end user of a unix system because everything you say is different is scriptable. most of the difference is entirely in the interface, or the appearance of what the system does, not in its basic architecture. sure, who does not list all the status's but status's like away and busy have been in use on irc for years, etc. the queuing of messages by status has been in eggdrop bots for a while now, it is send message x on condition y. in short, hci research will say there is a fundamental difference in the way people use systems, but as i said, with systems like fire, ichat, and eveybuddy, this set of differences based on interface is collapsed, because these systems appropriate the im's interfaces and map them over the functionality of irc, talk, etc. On Wednesday, December 18, 2002, at 01:29 AM, Quentin (Gad) Jones wrote:

jeremy hunsinger wrote:

...

a problem is that online awareness is the unix command who

A who command is totally different to having a series of names constantly displayed with different colours and icons to signify status. There is a huge amount of HCI research to support this as a fundamental difference.

, the buddy

...

list is part of a shell script with your user names, messaging is talk or irc,

Messaging linked to status on a buddy list is totally different to having to put in a name of somebody that you have first had to who to see if they will chat by opening up a chat window. Going to an IRC server is even further from this.

Quentin

jeremy hunsinger jhuns@vt.edu on the ibook www.cddc.vt.edu www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments

but it seems the innovation "something relatively new" as described in your first post as "online awareness + buddy list + over TCP/IP protocal + messaging" need not have had anything to do with interface, as it crosses several existing interfaces. It was my point to argue that this list of operations are not new. I agree that interfaces are important also, but it wasn't the point of my original point. I think it might be good in these situations to consider the cultural form that we are talking about also. just what is instant messaging, what would it have been comprable to in 400bc, 100ad, 800ad, 1500, 1700, etc. etc. the concept embedded within the variety of world cultures is not new at all, this is a new implementation, the systems underlying it are not even new in terms of digital systems, though as i think we both agree, the interface is new to some extent, though i think we may be able to find metaphorical comparisons in other systems that have existed before, such as some of the shared textual environments. I remember when i used icq the first time, my impression was that the interface was similar to parts of the daedalus writing system. granted, once im systems went into more personal devices you again have a transformation of the interface, and different types of diffusion, but in the end, what's new about it? the interface? ok, that's fine, but systematically the operation of this is quite the same as many other things in the digital world as i've previously discussed. If the similarities aren't present in your understanding of the systems, then i think we may have different contexts that may be incommensurable in some manner. kindly remember that email is an interface too, and that capitalization of whole words usually means you are yelling. i would not like to think that is intended. have a nice day, Quentin (Gad) Jones wrote:

jeremy hunsinger wrote:

...

i don't see a substantial difference in either esp. when one gets to be a high end user of a unix system because everything you say is different is scriptable. most of the difference is entirely in the interface,

That is what HCI research is about THE INTERFACE, a different interface causes huge differences in behaviour. It causes huge differences in diffusion of innovation too.

Q.

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elijah wright wrote:

...

While the patent office often gets things wrong (e.g. the hoo ha about Amazon.com's one click patent) this approval does suggest that IM=(online awareness + buddy list + over TCP/IP protocal + messaging) and is something relatively new.

maybe MIT should sue AOL.

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/trailing1002.asp

Amazing that people have such problems with the concept of Instant messaging. The MIT system did not have a buddy system linked to personal awareness status that could be moved from computer account to computer account. IT WAS NOT IM! Quentin

Karim R. Lakhani wrote:

it announced when users of interest logged on etc. I started using ICQ in the Summer of 1998 and saw it as Zephyr on Steroids living in the Windows Internet World.

From all the articles I have read Zephyr did not have anything like a simple pop up list that showed a list of buddies at one time that could be kept up as a peripheral awareness display which showed online status of users. If this is incorrect could you direct me to a source where I could read more, and see what the user interface looked like. This is the type of stuff we are starting to teach at NJIT. I have access to a great compilation video going back 30+ years showing what windowing and scrolling looked like and there is a lot to be learnt from it. Nothing like that appears to exist for IM features. Just to make it clear how important a feature peripheral awareness is a a distinct function I would recommend (UNFORTUNATELY :-) looking at a recent CSCW paper on a new Microsoft product. Designing and Deploying an Information Awareness Interface. JJ Cadiz, Gina Danielle Venolia, Gavin Jancke, and Anoop Gupta. Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2002). ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/tr-2002-87.pdf While it of course ignores all commercial IM efforts other than Microsoft's it does review the literature quite well. Quentin

this from Tim O'Reilly's BLog http://www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html Quentin (Gad) Jones wrote:

Karim R. Lakhani wrote:

...

it announced when users of interest logged on etc. I started using ICQ in the Summer of 1998 and saw it as Zephyr on Steroids living in the Windows Internet World.

From all the articles I have read Zephyr did not have anything like a simple pop up list that showed a list of buddies at one time that could be kept up as a peripheral awareness display which showed online status of users. If this is incorrect could you direct me to a source where I could read more, and see what the user interface looked like. This is the type of stuff we are starting to teach at NJIT. I have access to a great compilation video going back 30+ years showing what windowing and scrolling looked like and there is a lot to be learnt from it. Nothing like that appears to exist for IM features.

Just to make it clear how important a feature peripheral awareness is a a distinct function I would recommend (UNFORTUNATELY :-) looking at a recent CSCW paper on a new Microsoft product.

Designing and Deploying an Information Awareness Interface. JJ Cadiz, Gina Danielle Venolia, Gavin Jancke, and Anoop Gupta. Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2002). ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/tr-2002-87.pdf

While it of course ignores all commercial IM efforts other than Microsoft's it does review the literature quite well.

Quentin

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-- =============================================== Karim R. Lakhani MIT Sloan School of Management MIT Free/Open Source Software Research Project e-mail: lakhani@mit.edu voice: 617-851-1224 fax: 617-344-0403 http://opensource.mit.edu http://freesoftware.mit.edu http://mit.edu/lakhani/www ==============================================

TRACE-FOOD> -FP6- 5.44. Program Information. Search for Partners

Dear Friends ,

the University of Florence (LRE-EGO-CreaNET) would like to inform you that in collaboration with TUSCANY REGION in Italy we would search for partners on the Priority - IP PROGRAM on " QUALITY AN SECURITY OF

FOOD"-

Cod. Identity -FP6-2002-FOOD 1 Call EU-17-Apr.2002 -Dead-Line. 15 Apr.2003 > See: http://www.cordis.lu/fp6/food.htm - primary evaluation 6 MARCH 2002. Sector : 5..4. 4. TRACEABILITY of the FOOD CHAIN .

The principal objective will be to increase the consumer confidence in

in the safety protection of the food supply traceability would like to present a program on FOOD TRACEABILITY The request of the FP-6 R&D Program on FOOD TRACEABILITY are the following: – “Traceability” processes all along the production chain The objective is to strengthen the scientific and technological basis for ensuring complete traceability for instance of genetically modified organisms, including those based on recent biotechnology developments from raw material origin to purchased food products, and thereby increase consumer confidence in the food supply. Research will focus on: development, validation and harmonization of technologies and methodologies to ensure complete traceability throughout the food chain; scale-up, implementation and validation of methods in whole food chains; assurance of authenticity; validity of labeling; application of HACCP to the whole food chain."

Now a days the partnership of "TRACE-FOOD" FP-6 Program , is composed by , the Tuscany Region, Department of Development and Innovation <s.sorbi@mail.regone.toscana.it> and University of Florence in Italy <LRE@UNIFI.IT> , the Bulgarian Industrial Association ; Martin Stoyanov <martin@bia-bg.com>, the Otley College, Suffolk IP6 9EY, David Tolliday <djtolliday@otleycollege.ac.uk>, and probably some other partners.

The above partner team belong also to the LEONARDO 2002 Project on Traceability Processes , with the main goal to increase consumer confidence in the "Food Supply Management" .see: : http://www.edscuola.com/archivio/lre/ogm2.html ) http://www.programmaleonardo.net/leo2/leonardo2.htm

Now we search to assemble a critical mass of skilled resources supporting within a FP-6 Program the integration of EU research & development Centers with Industry in the Sector : 5..4. 4. TRACEABILITY of the FOOD CHAIN See:

http://www.forfas.ie/sti/pdfs/fp6_priority5_food_quality_bruno_hansen.pdf

Therefore the LRE/EGO-CreaNET of the University of Florence search for complemented partners that will be able to co-operate with the previous partnership for:

- Development, validation and harmonization of technologies and methodologies to ensure traceability throughout characteristic regional or local foods chains to enhance the quality and safety of

those productions

- Scale-up and validation of methods in whole food chain from raw materials to purchased foods , at the European extended level aiming to support the development of "Research Innovation Policies for strengthening the ERA program..

Research studies and best practices diffusion on critical point in

safe promotion and environmental protection management with a particular attention to the following issues: assurance of authenticity of declared origins ; validity of labeling ; biotechnological tools in HACCP to the food Chain utilization; to ensure the exclusion of specified high-risk and condemned materials from the food chain, and to guarantee the separation between biological products and GMO products in the global market.

As a matter of facts the LRE-EGO-CreaNET of the University of Florence

, would like to enlarge the partnership up to six European countries with about 12 partners and to extend the collaboration as "stakeolders network" to the <TRACE-FOOD> program at international level. - The Tuscany Region will get the opportunity to cover about the 25% //

30% of the entire Business Plan .

Sincerely I am very grateful about your partnership and also for any possible data dissemination and network partnership's formation of <TRACE-FOOD FP6- Program>

I am looking for your kind reply .

Having an Happy new Year .

My best regards and cordiality's Paolo Manzelli -- Director of LRE // EGO-CreaNET

PAOLO MANZELLI <LRE@unifi.it> http://www.chim1.unifi.it/group/education/index.html Education Research Laboratory / EGO-CreaNET Via Maragliano 77 -50144 - Firenze - Italia Tel//Fax.:+39/055/332549 ; handy GSM ;+39//335/6760004