Meet New People on the Move
TalkingPoint was Sam Kinsley's Final Year degree project and is a social navigation tool for wireless laptops.
It extends the user's ability to match with and meet other people in their locale.
Simple and Effective
TalkingPoint works by matching lists of keywords, you can choose the context of these keywords
and include as many as you wish by logging into your account on this website. When you run the
application these keywords are checked against other users. Matches are categorised according to
the number of matched words.
A 'hot' match is a strong positive match, a 'cold' match is a negative match. These are listed in order. The hotter the match the more you have in common.
Choose Your Own Context
Users subscribe to a context in which they wish to be matched. If the user doesn't see a context they wish to use they can create a new context template. They then must wait for others to subscribe.In the case of organised events a context could be created by the organisers named after the event and then users could simply subscribe to that. A context could also be for different social activities such as dating, networking, sharing expertise and problem solving and even bartering goods.
A context consists of user defined positive properties, those you are interested in, and negative properties, those you are not interested in. An aggregate value is assigned to each match, a positive to positive match is a plus point a positive to negative match is a minus point. If you have 3 positive matches and one negative match you get an aggregate value of 2. This is presented to the user graphically giving each matched person a colour, either hot or cold. Matches are sorted so that the 'hottest' matches are first and 'coldest' are last.
TalkingPoint helps users break out of their traditional, tribal groups of association by matching you with anyone in your vicinity with similar interests in your chosen context.
