Inferring presence in a context-aware instant messaging system

The increasing volume of digital communication is raising new challenges in the management of the information flow. We discuss the usage of context to infer presence information automatically for instant messaging applications. This results in easy-to-use applications and more reliable presence information. We suggest a new model, context relation, for representing the contexts that are relevant for inferring presence. The key idea is to represent both the communication initiator's and the receiver's contexts. The model allows sophisticated control over presence information. We describe a fully functional prototype utilizing context relations.