Technion: Social networking without the Internet

Development lead

Scientists at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, have developed software enabling people to chat on Facebook with nearby friends, without even being connected to the Internet.

Peersonalizer allows Facebook users to chat, share large files and play games without the need for the internet, at distances of up to 900 feet. The Peersonalizer application is a new feature of Technion software WiPeer, a collection of programmes enabling collaboration in server-less environments, such as homes and small office networks as well as peer-to-peer wireless networks.

The Peersonalizer technology can also be applied to networking sites such as MySpace and could eventually be used with WiFi-enabled mobile phones, such as the iPhone.

Since the Technion published Wipeer for free last year, 50,000 downloads have been registered.

Professor Roy Friedman, of the Technion’s Faculty of Computer Science, who created the WiPeer software said, “This application takes social networking to another level. Peersonalizer demonstrates that internet based social networks can serve as complementary mechanisms – rather than replacements – to social and business life.”

WiPeer enables sharing files directly among computers, playing multi-player games, chatting, and collaboration over both Wi-Fi and home/office networks. The new Peersonalizer feature of WiPeer allows people to discover whenever Facebook friends, or the friends of your friends, are nearby.

WiPeer was born as a research project at the Technion, to provide peer-to-peer Wi-Fi and home/office networking based collaborative applications such as multiplayer interactive games, chat, search, file sharing, and eventually also collaborative productivity tools. This is through direct communication between the devices and without going through any third party infrastructure or gateway, and without relying on a central server.

WiPeer helps to establish ad-hoc communities/social networks and find people from your network when they are nearby.