wessman
June 4th, 2003, 06:06 PM
Has anybody tried this, or willing to try it out? I'm curious about spyware, and it's potential for IM-based P2P. And doesn't AOL-IM already have this indirect ability, to share keywords and search for like-minded users?
Trepia: A Buddy List Of Strangers
from the hey-sailor dept.
posted by timothy on Tuesday June 03, @02:59 (software)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/03/0312249
An anonymous reader writes "Trepia has released an IM client that automatically populates itself with people who happen to be around you. Something that has been done before by Apple with iChat, but Trepia claims to be 'iChat on crack' in this [0]article featuring the software. This could have potentially revolutionary social effects..."
Links:
0. http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/business/technology/5987828.htm
You are here
BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA
Pioneer Press
Posted on Sun, Jun. 01, 2003
A Minnesota native turned Silicon Valley entrepreneur thinks he's found a high-tech answer to an age-old question: "How do I find other people in my area who share my interests?"
Jawed Karim's solution lies in software that allows like-minded strangers to find each other via computer networks — including the wired networks in offices and schools along with wireless networks increasingly found in airports, hotels, coffee shops and convention centers.
The Trepia program essentially turns network users into homing beacons. If they're sitting at their PCs and running the software, they broadcast their general locations along with whatever personal data they choose to make available. If two or more Trepia users happen to be near each other, they instantly become aware of that fact and are able to interact.
So if two Trepia-using college students who share a passion for the "Matrix" movies and the "Smallville" TV show are on the same campuswide network, they can electronically see each other. They are able to swap text messages and, soon, physically meet.
Likewise, if a St. Paul businesswoman checks into a Tokyo hotel and wants to find other Americans, she can fire up Trepia on her laptop to see who's nearby. If she's plugged into a hotel Ethernet network, the software searches it. If she's within range of public Wi-Fi wireless networks, Trepia also trolls those.
The latter technique so impressed Paul Boutin, a frequent contributor to Wired magazine, that he recently listed its parent firm, also called Trepia, as one of "25 companies to watch." The list appeared in a special "Unwired" issue focusing on wireless technologies.
"Location independence and location awareness go hand in hand," Boutin says by e-mail in response to a Pioneer Press query. "People want to be able to roam where they please, yet at the same time they're keenly interested in who and what is going on around them wherever they are.
"I'm not sure if Trepia will be able to pull people off AOL Instant Messenger, but a buddy list of nearby friends, or potential new friends, is a brilliant idea," Boutin says. "Why doesn't my phone do that?"
The Trepia software complements instant-messaging programs such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger that rely on existing buddy lists and are therefore poor choices for those looking to make new friends.
Trepia does resemble Apple Computer's recently released iChat instant-messaging program, which exploits a networking technology dubbed Rendezvous that makes multiple chat users on a Macintosh computer network visible to each other.
But Karim jokingly refers to his software as "iChat on crack" because he says it exceeds Rendezvous' capabilities in key respects. While iChat users can see each other only if they're on the same network, Trepia users on separate but neighboring networks also can become aware of each other under certain circumstances.
Let's say a corporate traveler called Tom uses a variety of public wireless networks in Manhattan over the course of an afternoon. If he is running the Trepia software on his Wi-Fi-enabled laptop, the locations of the wireless networks he uses are logged via the Internet on a Trepia server.
Now let's say another road warrior called Jim also is roaming Manhattan, popping into Wi-Fi-ready cafés to check his e-mail or browse the Web while running the Trepia software in the background. The locations of the wireless networks he uses also are logged on the Trepia server.
Because the Trepia mothership can surmise that Tom and Jim are near each other based on their respective Wi-Fi usage patterns, it can associate one man with the other and make them aware of each other.
From each man's perspective, a potential buddy pops up in a Trepia window. Tom and Jim are then able to peruse each other's publicly available user profiles to see if they have enough in common for an electronic exchange or a physical meeting.
Trepia, originally intended as a Wi-Fi-only tool, has acquired its newer wired-network capabilities in an updated version of the software being released this week. Karim says his product wouldn't flourish by catering only to Wi-Fi users at a time when that technology has yet to become ubiquitous.
Even by broadening its scope, the firm is a long way from achieving critical mass. It has only about 6,000 registered users around the world. Though the Trepia software has become popular on some college campuses as well as in parts of Japan and Scandinavia, according to Karim, users remain too scarce and scattered for Trepia's premise to become properly entrenched.
Trepia "will need big investment dollars to reach a critical mass of customers," Boutin writes in Wired. "Acquisition by a major service provider seems likely."
But the software is already getting attention on weblogs, particularly those catering to Wi-Fi users and others attuned to cutting-edge tech trends.
"In terms of the fact that 'personal contact and trust are intimately related' and 'face time' is 'an essential element in building trust with groups,' Trepia may facilitate mutual trust and knowledge exchange via instant messaging," says one entry on KM Blog, a weblog associated with a graduate course in knowledge-management systems at the University of Texas at Austin.
"There is a bit of creepiness, though," says an entry at Cruftbox.com. "Knowing that some stalkers begin their routine online (in chat rooms or via IMs), the knowledge that they can limit their pool of prey to people close to them geographically is a bit disturbing to me."
Karim says Trepia gives only general locations for users, letting them decide how specific to be about their whereabouts. They also can be as vague or detailed as they like in their user profiles, and opt not to use recognizable pictures.
Karim, 24, a former Maplewood resident who attended St. Paul's Central High School, operates his fledgling firm in his spare time while holding down a full-time job at the well-known PayPal e-payment service provider (now part of eBay).
Trepia remains a two-man operation — co-founder Cuong Do is the other — with only basic expenditures, such as the cost of obtaining a patent, and expenses associated with running the Trepia server.
"For us this is very low-key," Karim says. "We're trying to see where this goes."
He hopes blog buzz along with more conventional press coverage will boost the software's profile.
That's what happened, to a degree, with an earlier program Karim wrote in 1999 to let Windows users search local-area networks for MP3 music files. MP3 Voyeur has seen hundreds of thousands of downloads. It gets used thousands of times per day, making it a modest success amid ever-stiffer competition from newer, more powerful music-searching programs.
"It's interesting to release software that fills a void," he says. "MP3 Voyeur (at the time) solved a problem. All of a sudden, people could do something they couldn't do before.
"I've learned that really good ideas don't need advertising. Word of mouth will be enough."
© 2003 Pioneer Press and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
Trepia: A Buddy List Of Strangers
from the hey-sailor dept.
posted by timothy on Tuesday June 03, @02:59 (software)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/03/0312249
An anonymous reader writes "Trepia has released an IM client that automatically populates itself with people who happen to be around you. Something that has been done before by Apple with iChat, but Trepia claims to be 'iChat on crack' in this [0]article featuring the software. This could have potentially revolutionary social effects..."
Links:
0. http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/business/technology/5987828.htm
You are here
BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA
Pioneer Press
Posted on Sun, Jun. 01, 2003
A Minnesota native turned Silicon Valley entrepreneur thinks he's found a high-tech answer to an age-old question: "How do I find other people in my area who share my interests?"
Jawed Karim's solution lies in software that allows like-minded strangers to find each other via computer networks — including the wired networks in offices and schools along with wireless networks increasingly found in airports, hotels, coffee shops and convention centers.
The Trepia program essentially turns network users into homing beacons. If they're sitting at their PCs and running the software, they broadcast their general locations along with whatever personal data they choose to make available. If two or more Trepia users happen to be near each other, they instantly become aware of that fact and are able to interact.
So if two Trepia-using college students who share a passion for the "Matrix" movies and the "Smallville" TV show are on the same campuswide network, they can electronically see each other. They are able to swap text messages and, soon, physically meet.
Likewise, if a St. Paul businesswoman checks into a Tokyo hotel and wants to find other Americans, she can fire up Trepia on her laptop to see who's nearby. If she's plugged into a hotel Ethernet network, the software searches it. If she's within range of public Wi-Fi wireless networks, Trepia also trolls those.
The latter technique so impressed Paul Boutin, a frequent contributor to Wired magazine, that he recently listed its parent firm, also called Trepia, as one of "25 companies to watch." The list appeared in a special "Unwired" issue focusing on wireless technologies.
"Location independence and location awareness go hand in hand," Boutin says by e-mail in response to a Pioneer Press query. "People want to be able to roam where they please, yet at the same time they're keenly interested in who and what is going on around them wherever they are.
"I'm not sure if Trepia will be able to pull people off AOL Instant Messenger, but a buddy list of nearby friends, or potential new friends, is a brilliant idea," Boutin says. "Why doesn't my phone do that?"
The Trepia software complements instant-messaging programs such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger that rely on existing buddy lists and are therefore poor choices for those looking to make new friends.
Trepia does resemble Apple Computer's recently released iChat instant-messaging program, which exploits a networking technology dubbed Rendezvous that makes multiple chat users on a Macintosh computer network visible to each other.
But Karim jokingly refers to his software as "iChat on crack" because he says it exceeds Rendezvous' capabilities in key respects. While iChat users can see each other only if they're on the same network, Trepia users on separate but neighboring networks also can become aware of each other under certain circumstances.
Let's say a corporate traveler called Tom uses a variety of public wireless networks in Manhattan over the course of an afternoon. If he is running the Trepia software on his Wi-Fi-enabled laptop, the locations of the wireless networks he uses are logged via the Internet on a Trepia server.
Now let's say another road warrior called Jim also is roaming Manhattan, popping into Wi-Fi-ready cafés to check his e-mail or browse the Web while running the Trepia software in the background. The locations of the wireless networks he uses also are logged on the Trepia server.
Because the Trepia mothership can surmise that Tom and Jim are near each other based on their respective Wi-Fi usage patterns, it can associate one man with the other and make them aware of each other.
From each man's perspective, a potential buddy pops up in a Trepia window. Tom and Jim are then able to peruse each other's publicly available user profiles to see if they have enough in common for an electronic exchange or a physical meeting.
Trepia, originally intended as a Wi-Fi-only tool, has acquired its newer wired-network capabilities in an updated version of the software being released this week. Karim says his product wouldn't flourish by catering only to Wi-Fi users at a time when that technology has yet to become ubiquitous.
Even by broadening its scope, the firm is a long way from achieving critical mass. It has only about 6,000 registered users around the world. Though the Trepia software has become popular on some college campuses as well as in parts of Japan and Scandinavia, according to Karim, users remain too scarce and scattered for Trepia's premise to become properly entrenched.
Trepia "will need big investment dollars to reach a critical mass of customers," Boutin writes in Wired. "Acquisition by a major service provider seems likely."
But the software is already getting attention on weblogs, particularly those catering to Wi-Fi users and others attuned to cutting-edge tech trends.
"In terms of the fact that 'personal contact and trust are intimately related' and 'face time' is 'an essential element in building trust with groups,' Trepia may facilitate mutual trust and knowledge exchange via instant messaging," says one entry on KM Blog, a weblog associated with a graduate course in knowledge-management systems at the University of Texas at Austin.
"There is a bit of creepiness, though," says an entry at Cruftbox.com. "Knowing that some stalkers begin their routine online (in chat rooms or via IMs), the knowledge that they can limit their pool of prey to people close to them geographically is a bit disturbing to me."
Karim says Trepia gives only general locations for users, letting them decide how specific to be about their whereabouts. They also can be as vague or detailed as they like in their user profiles, and opt not to use recognizable pictures.
Karim, 24, a former Maplewood resident who attended St. Paul's Central High School, operates his fledgling firm in his spare time while holding down a full-time job at the well-known PayPal e-payment service provider (now part of eBay).
Trepia remains a two-man operation — co-founder Cuong Do is the other — with only basic expenditures, such as the cost of obtaining a patent, and expenses associated with running the Trepia server.
"For us this is very low-key," Karim says. "We're trying to see where this goes."
He hopes blog buzz along with more conventional press coverage will boost the software's profile.
That's what happened, to a degree, with an earlier program Karim wrote in 1999 to let Windows users search local-area networks for MP3 music files. MP3 Voyeur has seen hundreds of thousands of downloads. It gets used thousands of times per day, making it a modest success amid ever-stiffer competition from newer, more powerful music-searching programs.
"It's interesting to release software that fills a void," he says. "MP3 Voyeur (at the time) solved a problem. All of a sudden, people could do something they couldn't do before.
"I've learned that really good ideas don't need advertising. Word of mouth will be enough."
© 2003 Pioneer Press and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.