O'Reilly Network: Jabberwocky: Your Personal Compass

O'Reilly Network: Jabberwocky: Your Personal Compass: "Jabberwocky: Your Personal Compass
by Elizabeth Goodman
06/17/2005

Jabberwocky is a social mobile app, for Bluetooth-enabled phones. Elizabeth provides an overview of Jabberwocky and its potential. Did our world just get a little smaller?

Are all our interactions with people aimed at bringing us closer to them? It seems like designers of social applications often assume that.

Many social interactions in the real world are more subtle than the explicit connections, drinks, and dates. Busy streets are a case in point. Even surrounded by relative strangers, you can still sometimes spot some familiar faces--like someone you see every day at a bus stop.

Spotting a coworker in the stands of a huge and crowded stadium full of cheering fans is kind of unlikely, but what if you knew for sure that someone you knew from work was at the game with you? You might not be able to spot the person, but you'd know that you were in a place frequented by familiar people.

At Intel Research Berkeley, we've developed an application for Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones called Jabberwocky that does just that. When Jabberwocky is activated, the phone's Bluetooth radio repeatedly scans its neighborhood for other Bluetooth radios."

Great but why call it Jabberwocky? - There are already 2 sourceforge projects using that name.