Social Hardware

This project was developed in collaboration with Hsiao Ho Hsu and Ariel Vizcaino. Social Soup is a local network chat application, specifically designed to work with wireless nodes. The way it works is a person shows up on the chat "buddy list" or social network only if you are on the same wireless node (router/hub). The software includes peer to peer file transfer ,chat, and system administrator features . Social soup can be used as a downloaded application or a java applet run in the browser attached to a wireless login page (captive portal). Social Soup allows people to potentially "administer" a wireless node through giving the owner of the wireless router extra privileges, such as the ability to ban other users, restrict bandwidth or set time limits. The administrator or normal user can also use it to trade files and chat with people around you. This project uses java to make it universally compatible with all OS's and takes advantage of Zero config peer to peer networking so that there is no central server necessary, allowing for instantaneous ad hoc chat and file trading local networks.