Today's release in the world of presence/location-based mobile applications: Jaiku. It's basically a phone book that displays the real-time presence and location of your contacts.

We invented the term ‘rich presence’ to describe the many relevant things a phone knows about you. Rich presence on Jaiku includes an IM-style away line, your phone profile (ring volume, vibrate), location (country, city/region, neigborhood), Bluetooth devices around, upcoming calendar events, and the duration how long your phone has been idle.

You can view your contacts’ rich presence on jaiku.com, and once you have signed up, you can download a free client application for Nokia Series 60 Second Edition phones. We’ve also created some badges that let you display your rich presence on your blog.

Why do I blog this? because it's done by finnish friend Jyri Engestrom and his colleagues and also because it's quite relevant to my research about how mutual-location awareness impact group collaboration, from a socio-cognitive point of view. I am really intrigued by trying it out (mmh still have to find a nokia series 60 from their list) + seeing the potential connections with what I've studied.

Good Job Jyri!