Tello's Multi-Modal Interface

Tello Corporation has released its "instant communication service" designed to connect users across multiple communications platforms, including voice, instant messaging and web conferencing. Tom Keating wrote up a good analysis in his blog today -- see "Tello a near term solution?"

I'm always interested in the user interface and user experience for applications. For an application that purports to merge various communication methods, I'm curious to know how it tells you who is available over which medium -- and, of even more interest, how you configure your own presence controls so that the right person will be contacting you at the right time on the right device (it's not clear to me whether Tello actually allows you to control this aspect at all).

As far as I can tell, this is the only screen shot available on the Tello web site, showing the main communication interface:

This detail shows the icons that indicate your contacts' modes and availability:

Tom Keating raises some good questions about the viability of Tello as a service:

"Honestly, I'm not convinced a hosted service provider that centralizes and consolidates all of your presence information is going to be a 'killer app' that people will pay a monthly fee. The target for this service is the SMB market, not consumers, so it's possible that SMB CEOs looking to improve employee productivity will sign off on essentially 'renting presence knowledge.' It could especially help sales people quicky and easily reach their B2B sales prospects instead of playing voicemail tag or even email tag. Still, the verdict on IM in the enterprise being a productivity enhancer or productivity waster (chatting with your spouse or friends at work) is still out. I should mention this service won't work with Skype's proprietary chat mechanism, which is the #1 used VoIP application in the world today."

AB -- 1/23/06