A Dynamic System for Personal Communications: The Opportunistic Chat

Most of currently available inter-personal instant messaging systems are client-server based. Users of such systems need to be connected to some centralized entity which goal is to supply them with information needed to make the communication possible, such as the list of connected users, their status, and the address of their devices. Our proposed system for an "Opportunistic Chat" allows people to exchange written messages over Bluetooth and (if necessary) TCP/IP connections, with no need of any kind of centralized entity, by using ad-hoc procedures, automatically selected and operated. Such system can be accessed almost from any kind of device, either mobile or not, ranging from personal mobile devices (such as cellular phones and PDAs) to laptops and PCs. In the first part of the paper we give an introduction with a short overview of the system. Next we analyze some solution available in bibliography with a brief discussion on the comparison of the features. Then we present our system and its principles of operation, with a functional representation and a bit of implementation issues. A discussion follows on system operations along with the evaluation of the users\´ experience, thus allowing us to close the paper with a resume of what are our next goals.