February 03, 2003
Me and my digital shadow
Where's my digital concierge? Where's the thing that shadows me as I travel about from one online resource to another?
I want something that keeps tabs on all this.
I think using an IM interface may be the key to doing it. Trouble is most folks are thinking about IM the wrong way. They're trying to have their IM agent act standalone. While having a standalone agent has it's merits, I want one that's right there beside me.
Trouble is getting the tools to understand that something else is listening to my IM traffic. If I'm on a Windows box running MSN Messenger I can have the API allow an entirely different program listen to the connection. It can 'listen in' to the traffic and do things. AIM and Yahoo don't allow this. Things that try are hacks, at best. They're forced to either entirely replace the client or try to somehow "hook" their way into the existing client. Hooks into the apps are a hack-job arms race, it's nigh on impossible to do it in a way that doesn't break as soon as the vendor makes even the slightest change to the client. That and most of the IM vendors actually seem bent on deliberately breaking anything that tries. They're fools as this does more to harm them than they realize.
Trouble is, as soon as you leave your desktop and login elsewhere, the interacting agent gets bumped off the connection. So you're back to having to use a separate IM account again. What a pain in the ass.
Progress is being made on this front but it's been very slow in coming.
