One of the big claims about the Internet is that it expands your social network in ways that were impossible to imagine only 10 years ago. I have people in my social/business network from all over the world - from Japan and Australia to the US and Europe.
But has this been at the expense of real neighbourhoods? It's often easier to touch base with someone living in another country than the people who live in your immediate vicinity.
A while ago I wrote about Plazes which has local social networking possibilities (among other things). Now we have NeighborNode.
NeighborNode is a virtual noticeboard that relates to a wireless node, that transmits for 300 feet around itself. Anyone in that 300 feet (in line of sight) can both access the Internet and read the noticeboard and place messages on it. When you log in to the net, you're firstly sent to the Notice Board once a day and from there, you go where ever you want.
NeighbourNodes are then linked together, creating a wider neighbourhood network, enabling news, gossip and information to be passed into the wider local community.
You can either tap into an existing node (mainly in New York) or create your own by adapting a Linksys wireless router (pretty simple to do) or buying an off-the-shelf NeighborNode.
There's a couple of interesting points that don't seem to be covered on the site:
1. Who's paying for the Internet connection? Clearly, the person who puts up the node in the first place, but it would be cool if there was some way of sharing this cost across the Neighbourhood.
2. What would the ISP's think about sharing access in this way?
3. What about security, when sharing access? As a non-geek (sadly) I'm pretty sure that the security risk is minimal, but is this right? In any event, I think they should tackle the issue head-on, on the site.
We've seen a plethora of social networking websites (Ryze, Friendster, Ecademy, Linked In, Open BC to name a few), so could LSN (Local Social Networking) be the next big thing?
If you think about it, it does make a lot of sense.
If you're looking for dates or even business contacts, it's probably better to have them where you can meet them. And neighbourhoods tend (gross generalisation alert) to have the same sorts of people living in the immediate areas.
Still no business model though!
And even for areas with close communities, another Neighbourhood notice board will never go amiss - as the saying goes, you can never be too thin, have too much money or too few notice boards :-)
UPDATE: I emailed them with my questions above and this is what they wrote back:
1. Who's paying for the Internet connection? Clearly, the person who puts up the node in the first place, but it would be cool if there was some way of sharing this cost across the Neighbourhood.
Answer: Currently, the person who hosts the node pays for the connection. Hosting a node could be seen as a public service to your neighborhood, but I see it as something one would want to do just to meet one's neighbors. In that sense, it's not an altruistic action, but something that people are motivated to do out of their own interests. This project is still in it's very early stages however, and there are lots of possible payment models we could adopt going forward. We're examining all of the approaches and talking to the various parties involved, and you may see the payment model change in the future.
2. What do the ISP's think about sharing access in this way?
Answer: I don't know much about the UK market, but here in NYC, there is a spectrum of attitudes toward sharing access coming from ISPs. Some (most notably Time Warner) are very opposed to it. Several others (bway.net, Speakeasy, Cloud9 to name a few) explicitly support it. Still others are somewhere in the middle, with vague, undefined policies on access sharing. These differences could become a factor for end users in determining which ISP to use as awareness of shared connectivity grows.
3. What about security, when sharing access? As a non-geek (sadly) I'm pretty sure that the security risk is minimal, but is this right?
Answer: Wireless is inherently less secure than standard, wired ethernet. Any data sent wirelessly to a router unencrypted can be viewed by anyone in the area with the appropriate tools. This is true for ALL wireless, not just Neighbornode. The solution is to be aware of this, and to use encryption tools (notably SSL, SSH and VPN) when sending sensitive information. This will become much more standard behavior in the future, as the world increasingly goes wireless.
Original source: Net Art News
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