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SIGMobile is working in conjunction with SIGNet on the Liaison Project, an Apple Rendezvous compatible application for Linux and Windows. This involves automatic name resolution and service discovery for computers on the same subnet. What this means to mobile users: walk into a room and instantly know what other computers, web servers, printers, DNS servers, etc are on the wireless network.
Mobile devices tend to change networks often, so this ends up being pretty useful. Take your laptop from DCL (www.cites.uiuc.edu/wireless for info about wireless access) to your home, and your whole scope changes. If you use something compatible with windows file sharing and you are lucky enough to have that name resolution work, you still have to remember which computers are hosting what services on which port. If I have a Shoutcast
server on port 8100 of my desktop, I still have to remember the computer name and the port. And what if I have fifteen out of a hundred computers running servers? And what if I am not familiar with the network I'm on? How many times do you hear IP addresses and ports numbers yelled across tables at LAN parties?
What if you have a list of servers right on your screen, with a friendly description of each? As soon as your friend sets up the quake server, your roommate sets up the ftp server, someone sets up us the bomb, or ACM starts broadcasting live video feed from the speaker in 1320 DCL, you'll know.
Also on the agenda for this year are a few programs for the CS department, in exchange for monetary compensation (important for EOH projects). We've written software for building inventory that they'd like to market to other departments, as soon as we make version 2. This program uses a barcode scanning jacket on an iPaq. Also, we're working on a project to keep track of what packages are picked up from the mailroom. This will use a Palm-based barcode-scanner and magnetic-stripe-reader.
If you're interested in joining SIGMobile (no experience or inexperience necessary), email sigmobile@acm.uiuc.edu and come to a meeting. Also, check out the website for more information, and to join the mailing list.
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