Moot Café

We are thrilled to announce that QBA Café in Oslo has become an official Mooting Point. QBA Café is a perfect place to Moot. It is a cozy, yet roomy environment and offers free WiFi to guests and passersby. The area around the bar is great for hanging out and meeting friends, while the more lounge-like area further back is popular with those working on their laptops. QBA, of course, offers an excellent assortment of all kinds of teas, coffees, and drinks, as well as snacks and small meals.

In the coming days we will put up cool new Moot-posters at QBA. Guests who download and install Moot will be able to discover the QBA Mooter that is always present on the café network. The QBA Mooter currently lets guests check out and give respect to the menus. But the main attraction is of course that guests can discover other Mooters, browse content on offer, share files, chat, and express themselves locally--for free!.

QBA café is located in popular Grünerløkka, in Markveien at Olaf Ryes Plass.

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The Moot Team

Geo-social networking the Moot way

Moot connects you to people and content on the same local network as you are. More specifically, Moot is an application that currently runs on Windows PCs and mobiles connected to a WiFi network. Each Moot app instantly detects the appearance or disappearance of other Moot apps on the (local) WiFi network. Therefore, what you see in Moot's Arena view is an always up to date view of other mooters currently connected to the same WiFi network as yourself.

Current WiFi network standards - 802.11b and 802.11g - have a range of about 40 meters indoors, but longer outdoors. (The new, upcoming 802.11n standard has an indoor range of about 70 meters.) The mooters that appear in the Arena view are therefore quite near, location-wise. We say that Moot is a proximity-based social network, a local service for local people.

Unlike other social networks, Moot is inherently bound to the real physical world of its users. You might think of Moot as enabling and visualizing a virtual world loosely superimposed on the real world that surrounds you. Hence, when a mooter shows up in your Arena view there is always the possibility of a physical encounter in addition to the virtual encounter on the local network.

As a registered mooter you can become friends with other mooters. Moot then allows you to see when your mooter-friends are nearby. This might be useful in crowded places or when you are not paying attention to people passing by.

Another very interesting usage of Moot is as a group communication tool for a group of co-located friends or colleagues. In addition to the usual talking and gesturing that people do, Moot opens up several new channels of communication. Moot's instant messaging, statement broadcasts, and local file sharing can make communication in a group more rewarding and fun!

Notice that mooters need not only be people that move about. Shops, cafes, tourist information offices, museums, etc., may all join the virtual Moot world and use the Moot app to offer services and information to mooters that pass by (within WiFi range).

Recently, several internet-based social networks have added location-awareness and allow their users to monitor the physical whereabouts of their friends on a map. To enable this functionality, users must agree to periodically send their current location to the server of the social network. Some users might feel uncomfortable doing this.

One motivation behind such location-aware social networks (aka geo-social networks) is to allow friends to become notified when they are near each other. Another possible service is to notify users about the presence of points of interest in their vicinity. As explained, Moot can also offer similar services, but Moot does not require mooters to constantly report on their physical whereabouts.

Mooters are only visible to other mooters in proximity – just like in the real world.

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The Moot Team

Moot talk

Follow us through a short intro to the Moot concept



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The Moot Team

Moot: File sharing without (ISP) headache

Lately, the war on illegal file sharing has seen the content industry succeeding in getting governments to put more pressure on Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In Belgium, one ISP was ordered in court to filter out any downloading of files containing copyrighted material. In Britain, several large ISPs agreed to a government policy aimed to subject the accounts used for illegal file sharing to surveillance and harsh connection speed limits.

Such new requirements, it is safe to assume, lead to headaches for both ISPs and law-abiding internet users alike. Content filtering is very hard to implement since it is often unclear whether a file contains material that is actually copyrighted. Surveillance not only creates much unwanted work for the ISPs, but also makes their customers feel uneasy as their privacy is invaded. Forcing ISPs to punish account holding customers for infringements that others (e.g., relatives/friends, hackers) might have perpetrated is also unfortunate.

The attempted crack-down on illegal file sharing hurts those that communicate and share content without breaking the law. We believe in our users right to engage freely in legal file sharing. Though Moot is not a replacement for current file sharing networks, it offers an interesting supplement.

Moot offers a new way of doing file sharing that avoids the above headache by removing the ISP altogether. That is, since files are only shared locally, file traffic never touches the network of any ISP. Moot provides a truly direct connection between nearby users; there are no middle-men. Furthermore, local network IDs (local IP addresses) can not be linked to users. Mooters can therefore rest assured that they are anonymous unless they explicitly choose to make public their identity as part of their profile information.

Since local networks are inherently broadcast in nature, safeguarding privacy must always be a priority when communicating over WiFi or Ethernet. Moot therefore uses strong encryption to prevent exposure of user data, including searches and search results. Mooters therefore need not worry about the presence of spies in the local network.

Note that Moot does not encrypt the actual download traffic on the local network. We are considering adding encrypted downloads in the future, however.

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The Moot Team

Brand New World

Interested in new tech stuff, trends and innovative solutions?
We are the Moot Team. Our mission is to bring a new social experience to the world.

Ever thought of a social community that links together people that physically shares the same locality? Moot is exactly that - a social community based on the people around you.

Our belief is that a social service is really getting interesting when it absorbses changes in the proximity of the user and presents them in an interesting way.

Join in as a Mooter. Moot can be downloaded from our web site. Spread the word, get some other people to Moot with. Turn on the wifi and express yourself to other people around you, chat and share files.

It's all local, it's all anonymous and it's all fun. Pass it on!

Later
The Moot Team