As many of you know, JakobVirgil and I are in the midst of a Kickstarter for Tin-Can, an Android app that will work similar to Twitter, but will not use the internet or cellular network.
The Kickstarter is here.
In short, Tin-Can is a one-to-many messaging app where propagate by hopping from phone to phone.
Tin-Can allows you to send and receive messages without internet access or if cell phone service is blocked.
I have received a number of questions about how Tin-Can works here and on Kickstarter, here are some more details:
How do I exchange messages with other Tin-Can users? To the outside observer Tin-Can looks like a wifi-hotspot with the ssid TINCAN.
Whenever anybody tries to log in, it will politely tell them that they used the wrong password no matter what password they use. When one Tin-Can finds another Tin-Can, the messages are automatically sent. This will appear only as two phones not syncing up.
How does Tin-Can identify users? Tin-Can doesn't identify users for delivery. Each message has a sender, and if you subscribe to that sender, the message will display if it hops onto your phone.
How are messages connected to the sender? Tin-Can messages are signed and your signature will be unique. Even if both of us want to be called Steve, Tin-Can will keep us separate by assigning a 2 utf-16 suffix on your tag. I may be steve-山蛋 and you steve-산ಡಿ (“Steve mountain eggs” and “Steve acid D”) the suffixes are optionally hidden.
How will messages appear on my Tin-Can? Messages are public by default, and you can read messages going through your phone, making the experience akin to Twitter or IRC.
There will be different options that range from seeing only messages from users that you subscribe to, to a ‘firehose’ setting that will allow you to see all messages in your ‘lump’.
How long are messages stored on my phone? Older messages will be deleted based upon the age of the message, and possibly the number of hops the message has made.
We are discussing the possibility of extending the life of messages based on other metrics or user signals, and are open to ideas.
How many characters can a Tin-Can message be? It will be short. Our working length is 128, but that might change.
What about iOS? Not in the near future. However, Tin-Can for Windows (laptops and such) is a real possibility.
If you have any questions, we’d be happy to answer them.
I love this idea.
One area where I know this type of application would be perfect is for events when large crowds do not usually congregate. An example would be a music festival or large concerts. Most music festivals, sporting events and concerts I attend usually have a lack of adequate network coverage due to so many people being in the same area at once.
I find that most of the people at these events are trying to communicate with one another, making Tin-Can the perfect application. High Density of people, lack of working cellular coverage, quick communication within the crowd. Go for it guys!
So for those of us not incredibly technically savvy. What is the radius a cell phones' wireless has (or how close does someone have to be to receive a message)? Will you know how many people are within your tin-can radius at a given time?
good idea a number in the left hand corner that say how many tin can-ers are about.
dibs on Steve Mountain Eggs. thenewgreen can be Steve Acid D
If you hadn't beaten me to the punch, I'd be steve here. Now you're taking Steve Mountain Eggs too??!
There aren't a lot of hubskiers with more seniority than you steve-o. If being a hubskier were like being a vampire, you would be one strong vampire :-)
Are you saying I suck? ;-) and let's face it... duration of membership on hubski has NOTHING to do with value. This has nothing to do with the original post at this point... but I think that's one of my favorite parts about this community - the fact that I've been around since the beginning has nothing to do with anything. It's just a number next to my name. It's a silly bragging rights game that you and I can have. But the real measure of my "value" to hubski is posting and commenting intelligently. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: you've built a helluva good thing here mk and thenewgreen and everyone else on the team... and in the community.
Thanks man. You're the bees knees. While I know that you are right about what constitutes value here, I have a feeling someday you're going to utilize those bragging rights and hold it over me :) Ecib, cgod and mike too :-) Rightly so! It's been a cool journey this far, hasn't it! I remember when I first joined it could take many hours between comments and posts. It's so much fun watching the community grow.
The way that Tin-Can works is that is takes over the wi-fi hotspot in order to set up an ad-hoc network. This is explained in the details of the app on the Google Play store. To get back to your regular settings so you can use the Wi-Fi hotspot as a hotspot for your computer or whatever, just go to your settings and change the settings for your Wi-Fi hotspot to the settings you want (ie: name: camaheuto's hotspot, pw: helloworld)
Good stuff, potentially. :-) Sort of a people's mic implementation. 1. Will it be open source?
2. Do you plan to add/provide hooks for asymmetric cryptography?
3. Any chance for other connections (BT, perhaps?)
4. Linux? (Well, from Android should be easy) P.
Also, you should add these details to the kickstart page.
Really, it's a curiosity. It could feasibly work as a non-disrupt-able network in a disaster area, or in a protest in an authoritarian state, or it could simply be a network that is difficult to monitor. But in all honesty, it's been sitting in the back of my mind as just something interesting, and possibly whimsical. It could be made for iOS, but any iOS phone would almost certainly need to be jail-broken to use it. It's kinda outside the garden.What are your expectations for use?
It uses wifi to exchange messages between phones. Although wifi is often synonymous with internet access, we refer to the radio-based networking technology, often used for internet access. So all smart phones have this ability to exchange data over wifi. Instead of doing so with a router, Tin-Can lets them do it with each other. Messages are sent from one phone to another in a lump. Your Tin-Can sends me the messages it is carrying, and mine sends you the messages that it is carrying. So imagine you send a message out: You and I cross paths, and it hops to my phone, from mine, it hops to two others, from theirs, maybe 5 more, then 9 more, all the while anyone that that subscribes to mhr will be notified that a message from you arrived. Hope that helps!
Also, I like the idea of limiting the number of hops, as well as a user having the ability to increase the number of hops so that if they see a message they can then pass it on if its about to end.