p2pnet.net News:- There`s a new, free anonymous p2p client in town. From BrainTech, it goes by the name of Scatterbrain, it has no adware or spyware, and here`s what it can do:

• Allow customers, employees, or other groups of internet users to give anonymous feedback and ask questions about sensitive topics.
• Create small-to-medium-sized, public distribution networks for anonymous content distribution.
• Publish papers and manuscripts anonymously, and receive anonymous feedback.
• Share news footage that you have personally recorded (and have the right to distribute).
• Allow employees to anonymously share photos from the last company picnic.
• Anonymously publish your latest controversial novel, and allow others to give their honest feedback and suggestions.
• Allow customers, employees, or other groups of internet users to give anonymous feedback and ask questions about any topic.
• Share home-made music files and artwork on a public or private (coming soon), anonymous, virtual network.
• Remain anonymous while chatting with peers about topics you might feel embarrassed to discuss in a non-anonymous environment.
• Anonymously post self-help guides that others’ might feel better about receiving in anonymity.
• Organize and store back-ups on a private network of distributed computers (coming soon).
• Anonymously back up files you don’t want to have sitting around on your computer (coming soon).
• Create small, public, anonymous distribution networks.
• Post files and ideas where you don’t want to be known as the source.
• Anonymously retrieve files when you don’t want others to simply confirm what you retrieved by looking at a network log.
• Encourage individuals who might fear personal criticism or ridicule to anonymously share their creative ideas.

p2pnet asked BrainTech’s Owen about how the project got started, together with a few other questions.

Here’s what he had to say >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I came up with the idea for ScatterBrain in 2000, when I couldn’t find any decent, well-functioning anonymous p2p clients or networks. I believe I opened a pretty funny (but dirty) joke that someone had sent to my work email address. I wanted to share it with some coworkers, but there was no way I wanted to forward it and be known as the source of the joke. I’ve also felt weird in the past giving candid comments for teaching reviews, and into company dropboxes. I’ve thought, “wouldn’t it be nice to have my writing indistinguishable from everyone else’s, where nobody else would know who submitted this comment?”

Since then, other things have caught my interest. I went back to school to get a Master’s degree in Psychology, and I became interested in neuropsych. The parallels between the brain and a potential self-organizing, anonymous peer-to-peer network seemed to leap out. I also became interested in the social problems of anonymity and identity, and how social networks self-organize and share information.

Therefore, ScatterBrain is the result of a personal desire I once had to share a joke, plus several years of interest in neuropsych and social networks. I also thought it would be great if reporters and other news or document sources could have some way to get the word out about what was happening, without releasing their identity. As has developed on the internet, would networks of users find ways and the tools to discriminate legitimate content? This has since been explored in many p2p clients, but I am still interested in seeing how something like this works in an anonymous environment.

So, my interest in ScatterBrain is somewhat academic. I chose to release it at this time because I hit a wall in its development: unless real-world-use problems arose, I wasn’t sure what issues still needed to be solved. Now that it has been released, I see there are still many, many issues that need resolving! Content management in a decentralized, all-have-equal-say network is the most looming issue at the moment.

Even though we have formed an LLC, I don’t think we will ever be going commercial — at least not with file-sharing software. The release of the file-sharing ScatterBrain will help identify problems before-the-fact for a future release of decentralized, distributed backup software, which will likely be commercial. For instance – what are the biggest performance issues, how is content managed and/or controlled, what kind of methods can be used to guarantee high availability of data when nodes are constantly entering and leaving the network? These can be discussed in academic articles until the cows come home, but until they are tested, it’s all just abstract ideas.

So, our mid-term goal is to provide a decent anon p2p client, with decent content control tools, that stays on the right side of the law, that users find useful. I know it’s not an easy job, but we’re hitting the pavement running — no doubt there will be MANY changes in the ScatterBrain software in reaction to performance problems, user problems, content management concerns, and general usability.

Our long-term goal is to release an inexpensive, easy-to-use, reliable decentralized backup system for small businesses, either as a service, or as a packaged program.

BrainTech is looking for people to help by leaving ScatterBrain running in the background, or by starting a new virtual network

Download and install ScatterBrain here.

(Thanks, Alex)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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