uConnect p2p Communication Server

NOTE: this has nothing to do with Lync and is just myself keeping my brain cells stimulated. An evening, extra curricular detour…

After reading & thinking about webRTC, my take away is that the most transformative aspect is new “federation” models that webRTC has the possibility of enabling. One of these pointed out by Phil Edholm is a federation method that could be called “point at URL federation”. To envision how this would work I have started to write an extremely simple point at URL communication server (lab/proof of concept/experimental) to test the ideas.

The basic idea is that this type of “federation” (or inter organization connectivity) depends on nothing other than one user “pointing at another user URL” to connect to someone in the other organization. But what challenges will pop up with this? After scribbling on various napkins, I decided to just do a quick mockup app to test the ideas.

Pillars of this experimental Server/Client

• interconnectivity with as little connection “friction” is a foundational goal
• absolutely as little “start a conversation” friction as possible
• IM/P & note is foundational as well
• Note could serve as foundation for decentralized twitter-like social
• with media made possible by webRTC (or something like it)

Some of my initial goals:

• build an extremely simple server
• starting with IM/P and non-realtime modalities
• p2p server and client combined in web interface
• voluntary participating in directory connects many different p2p servers
• see how much can be achieved with GET model

(This is all a hobby/evening project so might take considerable time.)

Below: screen home user sees when logged in:

Below: screen guest user sees

GuestName –or- usernamepassword

Next the “external user” will see a screen similar to above, with themselves and other user (the url they typed in) in the conversation.