Serendipity35

NJIT has created a new university wiki at http://wiki.njit.edu. Nothing so cutting edge about that. We already have several wikis started by groups or departments (ours, for example, is at http://devel2.njit.edu/mediawiki/ )

Like most public wikis, you can edit or create any page here. It is created for students by students. Anyone who has an NJIT university ID can add additional elements.

Hopefully as it grows, you'll find out what's happening around campus, find out some things about NJIT that you didn't know before, discuss People, Places, and Organizations, rate things (it's anonymous) and more.

What I think makes this wiki more interesting is it's connection to the Smart Campus project at NJIT. Smart campus is experimenting with Social Mobile Computing (related to MoSoSo or Mobile Social Software which I'll write about in the near future). As new wireless networks comprised of cellular, ad hoc, local area, personal area, sensor and home networks emerge, "a network of networks" can be used to locate users and thus enable new applications. They are defining this as People-to-People-to-Places, or a P3-System.

From their site: "At the New Jersey Institute of Technology (the largest comprehensive technology focused university in the NY metropolitan area) we are creating the SmartCampus Test-Bed, a large scale mobile (hundreds to thousands of users), wireless campus community system that will serve as a dispersed living laboratory for the study of location-aware community systems with People-To-People-To-Places (P3) Services, in terms of:

1. Community building / social network impacts
2. Team / group coordination
3. User privacy [personal exchanges & location data use]
4. User Interface Techniques
5. Middleware design
6. Security [user authentication, access control, intrusion prevention, data integrity, etc]."

That means that on this wiki if I am logged in as an NJIT user, I can see who is in my proximity or who is logged in from the Campus Center, or the Redwood dorm etc.

If you have used online services like Plazes, you know what this is all about. If not, Plazes lets anyone with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop define a "plaze" (usually a Wi-Fi hot spot like a Starbucks or campus). It tells where the user is located and looks for other members nearby. When a user detects another member, the system displays similar interests and enables you to contact them. It also shows members when their friends are in other plazes, in case you want to physically go there to meet them. In big cities, there is a good chance of finding another member in your area. The Smart Campus wiki is a Plazes for the NJIT community.

What will make this mashup work (as with any wiki or location application) is getting members to participate. Logging in right now I only see 2 people in my building (on other floors), so it still has a ways to go.

Well, our branding slogan is "On the edge of knowledge" - let's see what happens when we get in a little further from the edge with this project.