When Pocketster, formerly Pocket Rendezvous, was announced, there was a great deal of buzz (which I aided in creating) about the potential for such applications in the real world and its potential to create new forms of networks. Things certainly looked promising.

Today, the prospect of these ad-hoc networks seems even more viable, but I'm not sure everyone will be happy about it. Apple has now updated their Rendezvous codebase to provide the functionality on both the Windows and Linux platforms.

[from News.com]

Apple Computer has published updated source code to its Rendezvous network-configuration technology for use in Windows, Linux, Unix and Java applications.

The move is designed to entice developers to use the code to incorporate the "zero configuration" technology into their own applications. The software allows network devices to automatically connect to other components of a network and to communicate what features they have to offer. The technology competes with the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology that Microsoft has developed.

This new release addresses one of my major complaints about Rendezvous, its availability on Macs only was very limiting. Now that the PC world can participate, there's a huge new virtual marketplace that can tap into this resource. One question to consider is exactly what type of network will form from desktop-based networks? Will neighborhoods start to literally become "Network Neighborhoods"?.

Personally, the untethered networks are the most interesting. These can be anything from laptop users at Starucks or in the back channel at a conference to the PDA-toting crowd wandering the streets and airports. In this regard, Simedia has a nice advantage, though it could be short-lived. Since Simedia is the one of the few, if not the only, PocketPC-specific incarnations, it creates many unique possibilities. Unfortunately for Simedia, the availability of this code could lead to some competition. I wouldn't expect to see Apple come out with a PocketPC version of the code, but stranger things have happened. For now, I think Simedia is on the high ground, but the water's rising.