rVooz and Contextual Connections

Don’t call it a comeback. But, there’s a recurring theme around automated introductions of individuals with a shared context. That context could be something like location, a search, a recent tweet, an operational situation - the list goes on and on. rVooz, a play on rendezvous, was an Air Force funded OSS project to create automated “contacts” in an XMPP buddy list, based on a shared context - the result is what we called a “contextion”. We didn’t get very far, before the entrepreneurial juices went dry - typical start dilemma - even in a government space. The problem is that the problem still exists, and isn’t being solved in a domain-less way. Meaning there are a lot of point solutions, which address an isolated issue, but those solutions aren’t transferrable across problem domains.

Here’s an introductory screencast into what rVooz looked like: http://www.vimeo.com/6741909

I can’t help but think this idea could use some flush/fleshing out. Imagine if the capability was extend beyond just chat/XMPP into VoIP/SIP

• and calls could automatically be created based on some event capture. Geo/location stuff is obviously a great “shiny” input. Imagine if you could have a skype call automatically setup, when you registered your location and were looking to rideshare - contextions made with others in a given radius.

Or, a more mil-specific use case might be an operational scenario where joint forces were tracking a common object - and could automatically be notified - as well as a communication path between the parties automatically created.

Anyway…just throwing this out there for historical purposes. :)