[asaunders_iotum]

Hi there,

My name is Alec Saunders, and I'm the CEO of iotum, a startup building mobile presence applications for Blackberry. Today we released our technology preview of iotum Talk-Now, which is an application designed to let you know when the people you need to speak with are available. It's a crossover between a buddy list and a to do list. You simply add the people you need to speak with in any particular day to it and...

1. It lets you see, at a glance, who's available to talk.
2. It lets you be notified when someone you need to speak with is available. You can literally add someone to your Talk-Now list, holster your berry, and have it automatically notify you when they become free.
3. It also lets you share your availability with others, even people who aren't
users of Talk-now, or Blackberries.

One of the really cool things about it is that it understands the relationships you have with the people in your life. So, for instance, your boss might see you as unavailable, but your spouse might see you as available... or maybe the other way around.

The application is free. Because it's a tech preview, there are still some rough edges to be sanded away. For instance, for now you need a data plan with 25M or more per month of data allowed. We will optimize that in the future. In any case, I think it's good enough that people can start using it. I'm hoping you folks will try it out, invite 10 or 12 of your Blackberry toting friends to try it too, and send us your feedback.

You can download, over the air. I'd post the URL, but because I am a newbie here, I don't have that privilege yet (doh!). You can send me email directly (alec@iotum.com) if you would like to try it out, or you can visit the main iotum website, slash blackberry, and download it there.

The press release we put out today follows.

Best regards and many thanks in advance for giving this a shot.

Alec Saunders


-----

Iotum Introduces Talk-Now Technology Preview

Combines Mobile Presence with Relevance on the Blackberry® for the First Time

OTTAWA, ONTARIO (Jan. 17, 2007) –iotum has introduced Talk-Now, a revolutionary New Presence application for the Blackberry® that combines the capabilities of a to-do list and a buddy list.

Talk-Now lets users share their availability with others, notifies users when people they need to speak with are available, and shows users the availability of their contacts to speak with them. Talk-Now promises to eliminate telephone tag, by allowing users to know when the people they need to speak with are available to take their calls.

Talk-Now is the first New Presence application to hit the market. Unlike traditional presence applications, which show the same availability to every subscriber, Talk-Now uses the intelligence of the award-winning Relevance Engine to show the subscribers actual willingness to speak with specific individuals, based on their relationship to the subscriber, and what the subscriber is currently doing.

“How many calls do we make that start with, ‘is this a good time?’” said Alec Saunders, iotum CEO. “How many of us reach voice mail instead of the person we want to speak with? With Talk-Now you’ll know, before you make the call, whether the party you’re calling can talk. It’s simply a better and more effective way to reach people.”

The Talk-Now application runs on the newest Blackberry’s – the 8700 series, the Pearl, and prior Blackberry’s running OS 4.1 or higher. BlackBerry users can get a free preview account by signing up at URL REMOVED. Installation is via over-the-air download.

About iotum|Simply Relevant™

Founded in 2003, privately held iotum is a Voice 2.0 company setting out to shape a world of relevant communications where devices and services work seamlessly together to let people communicate with who they want, when they want and on the device they want. Most recently they were awarded the Prestigious CATA Alliance Innovation Award for Emerging Technology Achievement – as the best emerging technology of the year in Canada; named a DEMOgod at DEMO2006 and named to Business 2.0’s Next Net 25.

####

[Nextel User]

Requirements:
Blackberry® OS 4.1 or greater
This service will impact the usage of your data plan



Enter iotum Account Information


Name:*

BlackBerry® Phone Number:*
eg: 1(613)555-1234 or +44 (0)870 000 0123

BlackBerry® Email Address:*
SERIOUSLY??????? I DONT GIVE THAT TO ANYONE!



Country:

[asaunders_iotum]

Hi Nextel User (who wants to be Verizon user...)

You can use any email address that ends up on the Blackberry. We only use that email address to send you the link for the OTA download.

Alec.

[saracen]

I need a few more posts

[asaunders_iotum]

A quick update -- some people have mailed me privately to say that they are having trouble logging in with their username and password. It seems that there is some confusion about the username.

The username is your blackberry phone number. I apologize for not being clear.

The password is the password you specified on login.

A

[julien iotum]

hi,

My name is Julien Raynal and i am in charge of user relations for this technology preview.
For the past 24 hours, we were unable to send the confirmation email providing credentials and setup instructions. I would like to thank you for your interest your feedback and your patience. The problem is now fixed and the original email will be sent to every user.

I am looking forward to your feedback so go and enjoy your new Talk-Now application

Julien
email adress for support:blackberry-feedback@iotum.com

[sempai]

Great, just we all needed, yet another incompatible presence and messaging sub-system.

What, XMPP and WV/IMPS weren't good enough for you?

[asaunders_iotum]

Sempai, dude! What makes you think it's "incompatible" and non-standard?

In actual fact, what it does is aggregate all of the information that you provide from a bunch of those other presence systems, add location, and a bunch of other context and then... drumroll please... interpret that and present it back as presence. We'll be wrapping it in an XMPP server next. So it will be 100% standard.

There's no messaging involved either. We're only interested in using helping you determine if the person you want to reach by phone is reachable.

Hope you'll give it a try.

Alec.

[sempai]

I'll hold my breath for XMPP and/or WV/IMPS.

I am completely disinterested in solutions that rely on desktops to determine availability and presence.

* Asterisk v1.2 (further external libraries will be required, details in the read-me.txt)
* Microsoft Outlook 2003 v2
* MSN Messenger

Asterisk good. Requiring Outlook and Messenger?

Sorry, "dude", but I'm not interested.

XMPP already does multiple instances and availability and additionally has a messaging layer. In my opinion, making that more relevant to mobile devices is the direction you should be going in, not requiring infrastructure and desktops to coordinate all of this metadata.

There's no messaging involved either. We're only interested in using helping you determine if the person you want to reach by phone is reachable.

Oh, that's nice. So if someone is busy, and I don't want to call them, I can't even send them a message to ask them to call me when they're free?

[asaunders_iotum]

Hey Sempai,

You've really misunderstood what we do, for which I apologize. Clearly I've misled you.

The documentation you've been looking at it is for interfacing the iotum Relevance Engine to a PBX and a corporate desktop. Talk-Now has no dependency on Asterisk, Outlook, or MSN messenger. We built the Talk-Now application in order to get around that limitation. Talk-Now is a mechanism for facilitating rendezvous with people that it's critical for you speak with using the contextual information sources available on the blackberry.

Talk-Now incorporates no messaging capability, because you already have many ways to message on the Blackberry. Why reinvent the wheel?

Talk-Now adds contextually driven availability information to the Blackberry. It takes into consideration calendar, time of day, location, free/busy status, and the relationship you have with the watcher, in order to present a much more accurate indication of availability than anything that currently exists in the presence world.

You can find out more information here:
iotum.com/talknowhowto.pdf

and here:
iotum.com/bb_FAQ.html

And, of course, you can sign up to use it here:
iotum.com/blackberry

Sempai, it sounds as if you and I probably have very similar views on how presence should be implemented on these devices. As you state, our goal is to make what we think of as presence today relevant to mobile devices.

Thanks,

Alec.

[phone_caller]

I am using the password and ID form the email and I still can't log in.

Any ideas?

I do not see how to reset it either.

Thanks!

[asaunders_iotum]

Hi Phone,

We're seeing two problems where a small number of people are unable to log in due, we believe, to the security settings that their mobile carriers have set on the device. It varies, depending on the service provider, and whether you are using BES or BIS. We corrected one problem, earlier this week, and we're still working on the latter.

If you could please forward details of which version of the Blackberry OS you are using, which device, which carrier, and whether you are using BES or BIS to , that would be very helpful.

Thanks, A

[asaunders_iotum]

Greetings again.

I wanted to update you all on our progress with Talk-Now. We've been working hard on fixing some of the issues mentioned in the comments on the original postings for Talk-Now. Since that time we joined the RIM ISV Alliance program, and have implemented something called BIS-B, which RIM tells us should fix the BIS problems many of you experienced. In particular, the problem of not being able to login seems to be fixed.

AND, we have made a number of small, but important changes to the app. For instance, it's much more data efficient than it used to be.

You can sign-up for an account, and download talk-now by visiting iotum.com/blackberry. Please let me know how it goes.

I've also made a short video, showing a demo of Talk-Now, accessible here:

one.revver.com/watch/171939/flv/affiliate/67863

Cheers,

Alec.

[mgerbasio]

Alec,
When this is released, what do you expect to charge for the service? I haven't tried the service yet but it does look interesting.

Regards-Michael G.

[asaunders_iotum]

Hi Michael,

My preference would be to continue to see Talk-Now as a free application. Current thinking here is that there is that we can build a very successful business by integrating more presence aware applications with Talk-Now, and charge for those applications. That assumes, of course, that Talk-Now is adopted virally by lots of users, which we believe it may be. So far, we're gaining users at a rate of 10 to 15% per week. If we can continue with that kind of organic viral growth, then the upsell model will work well.

Having said that, we're watching very carefully how adoption goes, and if the viral model doesn't work out, we'll have to figure out an appropriate price for it in the future.
A

[nexteli836man]

hi you answered my email and wish to post it here
it would be nice to have a turn off turn on feature other then un-install
not that there is a problem with the program
but in the event of low battery issue or just want to quit the program from running it would be nice to have that option

thanks just my 2 cents so far its a nice program

the only other question is how secure is my address book sitting on your server ?

[asaunders_iotum]

Thanks. That's a good feature request.

Regarding the security of your address book, there are a really two issues:

1) What data do we collect, and what do we do with it?

We collect the minimum address book information that is required to identify requestors of your presence information. Name, phone number(s), and categories I believe. We don't collect any of the notes fields or any of that other information that exists there. We also collect a small subset of your calendar -- enough information to identify meetings, and who they're with. In all cases this data is used solely by the system to perform its function for you. We don't share this data with anyone, nor do we keep it if you choose to quit iotum. Our guiding principle is that it's your data, not ours.

2) How do we secure that data?

The servers which run the service are located at a secure data center. Access to that data center is physically restricted via key locks, as well as biometric security devices.

Hope that helps!

A

[nexteli836man]

Originally Posted by asaunders_iotum

Thanks. That's a good feature request.

Regarding the security of your address book, there are a really two issues:

1) What data do we collect, and what do we do with it?

We collect the minimum address book information that is required to identify requestors of your presence information. Name, phone number(s), and categories I believe. We don't collect any of the notes fields or any of that other information that exists there. We also collect a small subset of your calendar -- enough information to identify meetings, and who they're with. In all cases this data is used solely by the system to perform its function for you. We don't share this data with anyone, nor do we keep it if you choose to quit iotum. Our guiding principle is that it's your data, not ours.

2) How do we secure that data?

The servers which run the service are located at a secure data center. Access to that data center is physically restricted via key locks, as well as biometric security devices.

Hope that helps!

A

Good Answer Thanks ... just wanted to bring out on the table

[kathrynhr]

Hey! A question and two comments:

First, I downloaded and played with your application, but decided it's not for me at this time since most of the people I'm in regular contact with would probably not be persuaded to sign up for this app.

Question: How do I unsubscribe? I didn't see an "unsubscribe" option on your web site.

Comment 1: I would have been interested in keeping this app if it redirected incoming calls to my voicemail when I indicated I was "busy," even if redirecting to another phone is not an option.

Comment 2: If I continued to use the application, I would like one user category whose phone calls would always get through, whether I said I was "busy" or not. For example, if my kids' school calls, I want to know it immediately because I would have to act immediately... even if I were in a meeting. At present that's the only party that should be able to reach me whenever and wherever; everyone else can wait a few minutes. I would want an emergency category like that.

Cheers!

Kathryn

[asaunders_iotum]

Hi Kathryn,

Thank you for the feedback.

We will implement an automated unsubscribe in the future. For now, please send email to requesting that your account be removed and your data deleted. Beta software ;)

Both of your suggestions are excellent. We have implemented both these ideas on PBX's in the past, and may be able to implement them on the blackberry. I personally have my system set to do exactly what you describe, but all calls pass through our corporate PBX first, before reaching my Blackberry. In my case, people I have flagged as VIPs, or as family are always able to reach me. I am not sure if we are able to perform the query on the Berry in realtime as a call is being presented. It has been the subject of several conversations at iotum already.

Best regards,

A