[chrisamanse]

Bluetooth used to be common until vendors started implementing their own file-sharing or just focused on sharing files in the "cloud", which is really inconvenient when there's no internet connection (not to mention, even when there is internet connection, it's really an inefficient process, bandwidth-wise, to send someone right beside you a single file over the internet).

Maybe we should push a standard for local file-sharing so that all vendors will implement it in their mobile operating systems.

[calgoo]

We need to focus more on mesh wifi networking. If Our phones could connect directly (and they can) using wifi in a mesh, it would be quite easy to write network clients to share data with them.

[chrisamanse]

FireChat (http://www.opengarden.com/firechat.html) tried to do mesh network messaging, but security is hard to get right in mesh networks, since the data passes to other clients if needed. For example in Tor, it's great use for anonymizing end users, but it's not great for security - I wouldn't use it to send confidential information such as credit card info.

[calgoo]

What about a rings of trust system? Tap your phone to someone you know etc, and your devices know to trust each other. Add a level of trust to that, so the apps can act accordingly. Also, make it so messages can be stored until a PtP or relay over internet can be done.

[izacus]

Android Beam does exactly that. Of course Apple benefits financially if they refuse to implement it.

[calgoo]

Yea and its good for when it works, but i was talking more of a true mesh, where the message is passed between phones directly until it finds a path to the net or destination.

[joosters]

The problem is that there are lots of standards for local file sharing, and vendors all choose different standards. The answer to this problem is unlikely to be creating a new standard (insert obligatory XKCD link here)