Sometime around 2006, when I was in high school, I remember sitting at a Burger King with a friend of mine. We were enabling Bluetooth access on our phones so that we could share files when we noticed there were about five people near us who also had Bluetooth enabled on their devices. We tried to figure out which Bluetooth device names corresponded to which of the people that were sitting at Burger King with us. Then I said something along the lines of "Wouldn't it be funny if we send our files to those people instead? What would they say?" Followed by "It would be cool if we could, like, chat with the people around us via Bluetooth. It'd decrease Missed Connections on Craigslist by, like, half."
We don't hear much about sharing files with other phones/devices via Bluetooth these days because most of it's been replaced by Wi-Fi and apps. And the whole idea of knowing who is in the same room as you by looking at your phone has been replaced by check-in services, like Foursquare and Gowalla.
The third, -- chatting with people who are near you -- I just found out about today. There's an iPhone app called Yobongo, which allows you to do just that. I thought it was brilliant when I heard of it. It allows you to communicate with people around you, people you've talked to before, and people you already know. It's still in Beta and will be available for free in March. While I don't own an iPhone, I'm glad this idea has come into fruition. I'm a sucker for innovations in communication. And more of a sucker for services that allow us to talk to people when we find interesting if we don't want to embarrass ourselves in person first.
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