Virtual bottle post
A javascript based hosted applet for websites which, hooked up through a centralized server, operates as a small window onto a network along which targeted but undirected messages float.
Say you’ve got one of those applets running on your website. Any visitor to your website can throw in a message and decide to direct it to someone, or not.
Because the applet is hosted and javascript based, the centralized server can know the IP address of the website/server on which your applet is located. Through a geographical IP address locator, it’s possible to determine the physical location of your server as well as the locations of the nearest, say, 100 applets. That is, websites with the same applet.
Then, after a certain time, say a random time between 10 and 60 seconds, the message your visitor threw into the applet on your website, is moved on to another applet, randomly chosen from the nearest applets, with the chance of the message ending up at any of these applets being inversely proportional to the distance of these neighbors to your applet.
At the next applet, the message will stick around for a random time between 10 and 60 seconds again, before moving on to the next applet.
At any applet, the messages currently present at that applet are shown and dynamically updated. A visitor of a particular applet can pick up a message, read it, and throw it away. Or put it back in the applet.
The end result are many messages moving around randomly on the web which, if a user stumbles upon one, can be opened, read and thrown away or put back. Just like old fashioned bottle post.
Doe Maar
Doe Maar is doing a few reunion concerts, eight years after their previous series, in July, both in the Netherlands and Belgium. Shortly before the end of my contract in Thailand. Damn.