The weather changed quite a bit today.  It’s just starting to rain now.

I was reading craigslist this morning and noticed this comment in a job posting:

• This is estimated to be a 10-week assignment starting January working
  on-site at the ad agency in El Segundo. No offsite work due to
  firewalls.

What a bummer! Sounds like these guys could use a copy of SpinXpress.

Took a nice walk with Alicia yesterday in the new Ventura River Preserve in Ojai.  The new  sidebar photo was taken on the walk.  Here is a link to the complete photo set.

This is the first in a series of posts whose initial discussion will be centered around defining a metric for the notion of "digital presence" (DP).  Let’s begin by examining how people currently use this term on the web.

Using Google and Vivisimo, one sees several common uses of this phrase:

1. DP can refer to a person or organization’s image, look, presentation, appearance, visibility, representation, reputation, etc. This can include those sites/communities/publications that you control and those that you do not (e.g., open forums). This term is used by some web designers and marketing folks. Also used by biz/tech columnists to describe acquisitions of digital technologies/content/companies.  Examples include: Kodak in Deal to Boost Digital Presence, or Apperceive’s digital presence is not as great as that of HP’s.
2. DP can refer to the existence or availability of a resource - that is, a person, device or application - on a network. Being "present" ranges from simply being registered to actively participating with others.  Examples include: markus@outhink.com is currently logged into the SPIN network using SpinXpress. Also, ‘markus’ is shown as busy on MSN Messenger; or a resource is available in SpinXpress. Also having your computer help others make smarter choices about how to reach you. Here is an article about this that has a great title: Beware of geeks bearing presence.
3. DP refers to "telepresence", as in video-conferencing or virtual worlds. Example: "Dave’s digital presence in the virtual music studio is quite lifelike; it’s as if he is in the studio in LA, even though he’s actually in Tiburon".

Note that these three definitions are not entirely distinct nor exclusive. With that in mind, I am mainly interested in the first meaning.

Ultimately, we are interested in defining a metric for DP. We want to be able to say things like "Using our approach, clients typically see an increase of x% in their digital presence". Or, we might calculate and report metrics for various entities and define a "Billboard" style chart for their DP.

Feedback?