[guardian-dev] FireChat is iOS mesh chat

James Moore hello at jmoore.me
Fri Mar 21 14:26:11 EDT 2014


At the recent Open ITP UX Sprint I discussed the idea of using Apple’s multipeer framework to build an anonymous chat app very much like Firechat. What I wanted in addition to what Firechat provides is

* Up/down voting of individual messages to help cull bad actors
* Store and forward of messages to extend the range beyond a single device pairing (I don’t know if this is possible with MPF)
* instant image/video/location distribution

I saw this as being potentially useful in a large crowd situation where you need to distribute information quickly with zero setup. Paired with a technology like Informacam you can imagine not only getting the images sent up to a trusted repository but “out” to people on the ground who need to know something immediately. Location sharing could be useful in moving protests to help direct the crowd.

My hope is that the voodoo involved in negotiating a connection gets opened up or cracked so non-iOS devices can join in the fun.

If anyone’s interested in creating a project like this with me hit me up off-list and we’ll discuss. 

	James

On Mar 21, 2014, at 10:00 AM, Josh Steiner <josh at vitriolix.com> wrote:

> The marketing-speak description sounds really interesting:
> 
> "FireChat For iOS Is A Hyperlocal Anonymous Chat Network That Doesn't
> Need An Internet Connection"
> 
> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/20/firechat-for-ios-is-a-hyper-local-anonymous-chat-network-that-doesnt-need-an-internet-connection/
> 
> Anyone seen any good detailed writeups of the tech behind the scenes?
> I found a few interesting posts about the iOS proprietary mesh, but it
> sounds like FireChat adds their own store-and-forward on top of this
> if they are claiming 100ft+ range
> 
> -Josh
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