Granulate my presence

After an abortive attempt a couple of weeks back, dashed by a Canadian blizzard, yesterday I finally had a chance to catch up with Alec Saunders of Iotum, to discuss the company's Relevance Engine. (Rich Tehrani's post gives a great overview, which I won't duplicate here.) Suffice it to say that this seems to be a big step towards the kind of refinement of presence management which many have been yearning for. I would love to try it out, but at present it's only available in Canada, though I would expect that EuroTelcos may take a keen interest as they all pursue the Holy Grail of home gateway-centered/converged services. If we accept this proposition as being an attractive one to the end user, then a solution like Iotum's may be the essential glue to make multi-service communications a smooth and satisfying experience for the user, rather than yet another form of technoppression. I am also curious how the device manufacturers (both mobile and in the gateway/set-top box space) could run with this concept in future, particularly if we assume that devices inevitably become more context-aware. This is clearly only the tip of the iceberg, but it is an impressive start.