Sonar - Project Draft
Contents
Definition
FreeSonar is a mobile free software for real-time location-based socializing, sharing PoI, self-organizing and sharing events, travelling, ride sharing and other features.
FreeSonar helps to link the virtual world of social network users into real world around them, encourageing to interact in real time at real places based on shared interests or shared activities.
FreeSonar is designed to be interoperable with other similar open services and applications carefully considers users freedom, privacy and security providing them maximal control of their visibility, ownership of their personal data and independence from proprietary services.
Description
location based profile search, interest based activity search, real time event search, combined search for a given proximity around given geographic place for a given interest keyword, in a given time period, etc.
Features
Identification/Authorization
- Account creation. - User and device identification. - Access authorization.
Social networking
- personal profiles - friends list/groups - private messaging - wall posts - user profile search by name/location/keyword
Location sharing
- Displaying current location on a map (if enabled by user's privacy options) - Manual checkins into areas defined by users. - Automatic checkins for the predefined list of areas. - Places of interest: places are named not as street addresses but locations like "Home", "Doodles Club" etc. - Geonotes: users can leave a note at a specific location for themselves or other people which they will receive next time being there.
Alerts/proximity notifications
To reduce the repeating queries of the users it is possible to subscribe real-time proximity alerts for the following: - People matching search criteria for Interests, Activities, etc. - Travelers sharing car space or looking for transport matching the travel route (partially or completely). - Places of interest matching the search keyword/tag. - Non-private events matching the search keywrod/tag.
Location triggers
- Automatic triggering of a specified callback URL when user enters or leaves a specific location. - Automatic check-ins on other platforms using open APIs (Foursquare, Facebook Places, Latitude, etc).
Travel/Transport sharing
- hitch-hike/pick-up alerts - alerts for matched travel plans from different users - places to stay: accommodation rentals/sharing, coach-surfing
==Aggregetion of geocoded wiki articles:
- Wikitravel - Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide. So far it has 24,445 destination guides and other articles written and edited by Wikitravellers from around the globe.
Events/Activites
activites, events, calendars, subscriptions - - activity search by title/keyword/status/location/date
- Eventful - A web service which aims to help users to search, track, and share events. Users can search for events worldwide by time, location, performer, keyword. Can create private or public calendars.
Simple User Interface
- Almost invisible user interface. - Visualization of the geo-radar.
Architecture
Open protocols
Development of protocols for P2P real-time location data sharing.
P2P network system
Theoretically P2P protocols support delay tolerant communication via all possible ways that any one peace of hardwear can comunicate with any other peace of hardware (Internet, intranet, bluetooth, usb memory disk, etc.)
Mobile multi-agent system
Real-time map
GPS-enabled mobile phones which are connected to the internet send data to the server at regular intervals. If there is no GPS the location data can be calculated from wifi spots and cell towers with sufficient approximation.
Aggregation of different layers into the map: Google Maps and Layar provide web services and open APIs to access their user contributed database of places-of-interest.
Evaluation
The growth and potential of the mobile market is really amazing. A new report from Juniper Research says that the number of subscribers using mobile Internet services will rise from 577 million currently, to top 1.7 billion by 2013, spurred by demand for collaborative applications known collectively as 'web 2.0,' and greater 2.5/3G penetration. Putting that figure into some context, a report from Gartner earlier this week had said that the worldwide PC base would reach 2 billion by 2014 - so internet access by mobile phones will represent at around 50% of the total internet usage. Source: Cellular News.
Related Endeavors
License
Sonar is a free software application developing by the community efforts for the community. It is available under GNU AGPL License.
- GNU AGPL - The GNU Affero General Public License is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works, specifically designed to ensure cooperation with the community in the case of network server software.
