Find me. If you can.

I now know why the term 'find-me/follow-me' meant so little to the friends I used it with 3-4 years back. At the time, it seemed like such an intuitive term - in itself somewhat of an anomaly in technology. Afterall, 'find me' or 'follow-me', what's not to get. And as a telecom person, I had heard the term for so long myself that I just figured people knew it. Not so. Call forwarding seemed to work, but for me, didn't really do the package justice.

Fast forward to now where everyone is being found or followed. The proliferation of personal, web-based telephony applications like GrandCentral, Ifbyphone and GotVMail have certainly helped. Or at least done what their predecessors - over-featured key systems - perhaps couldn't.

Forward even faster and like we see so often, as soon as the masses start to 'get' something, we change the game. The beauty of Find Me apps is that when properly managed, they do just that. They take the finding and following out of the equation for the caller. But there's a hitch. The call receiver has to program and then intermittently manage the application. Garbage in, garbage out. Don't tell your assistant where you'll be at five, they probably won't find you. Neither will your phone.

Enter presence-based find me solutions. These come in a few flavors. There are those where you can log in and out so the application knows which 'rules' to follow. And now there's 'touch' based presence. Haven't typed on your Mac (or PC) in a while, your phone will figure you're away and your find me rules will kick in. Fonality introduced this feature this week and others have it. Just don't expect your friends to understand it for a while....