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I was talking to a friend of mine today who recently completed his MBA from I2IT Pune. He was telling me that he & his college & hostel roommates used to share videos, songs, documents & even chat on the college LAN. I saw the LAN Chat application he was using which was quite crappy & something came into my mind. The P2P protocol is already there in Vista inbuilt, & usable in the form of Windows Meeting space which can work through the Internet, so why not have a similar communication system for LAN. This can really help students in colleges with fast LAN connections or Organizations in saving Internet bandwidth costs.
Since this chatting client will work on LAN only mean the bandwidth used will be internal & local, & always available without interfering or slowing down the real Internet Pipeline in the Institute. This is more like Yahoo Messenger made for LAN with many features omitted as they will not be required in LAN.
Presenting Windows Shorthand, a LAN Communication Application. Once started, it will automatically scan for other computers on the LAN provided they also have Windows Shorthand installed. Then it will display a list of all the available clients in an easy to see & manage friend list which can be sorted with groups etc much like what we have today with Yahoo Messenger. The menu bar is invisible but can be seen by pressing the Alt key. It does not need Internet at all. This is how the startup screen looks like.
Each & every computer on the LAN has a specific IP which in most cases is Static. Windows Shorthand will give the ability to each user to set a small profile for himself in Shorthand like a Nick Name & some details which will be saved in a XML file connected to the users Local IP address, now when someone else finds this user they will see his nick name & not the IP address or the computer name on the LAN. To chat they just have to double click & start talking.The user can set a status message for himself. There is a handy search field below the messenger list using which you can search for a particular user in a long friend list. This is how the Messenger List looks like.
Once you are chatting, this is how the Chat Window will look like.
Users can transfer files, do voice or video chat or video conferencing & even have something what I call "Media Share", which is more like Yahoo Messenger's Photo Share just that it will show Video, Audio & Images.
That chatting font can be set in options as shown by the Gear Icon in the toolbar. You can also use common emoticons from the emoticon drop down menu.
It doesn't need plethora of features as this is not supposed to replace any Internet chat client such as Google Talk or Windows Live Messenger. It is simply made for college students & organizations to communicate on LAN.
This concept is made using Microsoft Blend, Photoshop & Icon Workshop. Depending on the feedback here I will design the layout & UI for the media share part too.
Concept UI : Windows Shorthand
Linear Mode
