Synthesis Studios

With a few iPhones floating around the office, and no iTunes enabled Starbucks in sight–we were feeling a bit disenfranchised up here in lovely Cambridge. Given that, and our love of “just in time” information, we felt we had to take matters into our own hands. And so we did.

Want to check it out for yourself? It’s easy: stand outside our office, and fire up the WiFi iTunes store. Now check out that Starbucks button!

Want to check it out for yourself? It’s easy: hop on the T to Porter Square in Cambridge, stand outside our office, tune to the “tmobile” WiFi network (you should be able to pick it up from the street), and fire up the WiFi iTunes store on your phone. Now check out that Starbucks button! (you’ll notice that we’re hiring too)

Any student who took “Every Bit You Make” should be able to pull it off as its pretty straight forward. All it took was an Acela ticket, and a morning in New York in the Times Square Starbucks with my laptop, my iPhone, and a bunch of network snooping. Granted, I probably got some funny looks while being overly caffeinated and staring intently at my laptop…

We’ve been tinkering with a couple of different projects in the social media space; our most ambitious, 1Hop, has been attracting some attention recently. 1Hop is a cell phone application that grabs data from your online social networks and tries to rectify that against the phones (and therefore the people) you meet on the street. While 1Hop comes from the pedigree of Nokia Sensor, Imity, and some research work of Nathan Eagle while at the Media Lab, what I find the most compelling and different is that 1Hop is not creating a social network and taking it mobile, but instead relies on networks that you’ve already created and you already tend to – 1Hop just gives you a different view into those networks, one that is seen from the physical world.

1Hop is not creating a social network and taking it mobile, but instead relies on networks that you’ve already created and you already tend to – 1Hop just gives you a different view into those networks, one that is seen from the physical world.

For anybody who spends time away from his or her computer, this view is important! For that, I mean, it’s trivial for you to “meet” people online, but sometimes it does just come down to face-to-face. What do you talk about? The weather? The other person’s shoes? How about talking about a mutual friend instead? What about seeing the photos the other has placed on Flickr? 1Hop constantly does Bluetooth searches looking for other phones around you, consults with the 1Hop engine, and then decides whether it should buzz its user. We really don’t want to interrupt the user that often (he or she may already be chatting with somebody!), so 1Hop takes careful care to manage its user’s attention – and when he or she does pull out the phone, 1Hop puts up “just enough” information for him or her so he or she can put that phone right back and bring the eyes and face up.

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