Neighbornode was a project I created for a class at ITP in early 2004. I spent just twelve weeks coming up with the idea, building it and launching it in New York’s East Village. When I put up the first router at my friend Mo’s apartment, I figured it would go up, I’d turn in my final, and it would come down a few weeks later. It was just a class project.

But nearly four years later the project is still going, entirely under its own steam. I get emails at least once a week asking for the firmware (even though it’s available on the site). The latest email is from a sergeant stationed in Iraq. They have wifi in the main tent on their base, but it’s too hot to spend much time in there, so they set up their own router outdoors and figured they should add Neighbornode on top of it.

It’s really satisfying to turn something loose into the world and see people take it up on their own and use without any prompting. Even more so when that happens by accident - when you expected the thing in question to have a life span of a few weeks.

The funny thing is that because I figured Neighbornode wouldn’t last long, it isn’t built very well. The UI is terrible, the functionality is clunky, certain aspects of it dead-end without amounting to anything. The project was more of an idea than an actual, complete website. Still, people bother to set it up. Even with all of its defects it has an intrinsic appeal.

Neighbornode could be really useful to people if it were open source, and anyone could add whatever they wanted to it. That would allow the idea of Neighbornode to spread and grow, without being hobbled by the clunky code and design I threw on it in the last week of class. I’d love to see the idea morph into new things.

Of course I don’t have the time to open source it. If you do, drop me a line, I’ll send you the code.

Posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007. Filed under Random.
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