With instant messaging beginning to succumb to the same kind of problems that have plagued email for a while now (spamming, identity theft), the time is ripe for a fix – I give you Humming Bird AIM!

Picture the scene: you are sitting at your desk, bored and want to send a message to your good friend Ed in Finance. You type a message for Ed into the AIM client and press “Send”. Your message is printed out on a tiny printer next to your computer and picked up by your AIM hummingbird, Buzz.

Buzz is trained to recognise the names and respective locations of people on your Buddy list. He picks up the message and flits off to Ed’s desk at lightning speed, bringing you a reply just seconds later.

This new technology solves the problem of spam, since all messages are necessarily one-to one not broadcast.

It also provides authentication since Buzz is branded with your initials/coat of arms, so that recipients can be sure that messages have really come from you.

There are a few downsides – obviously the “A” in AIM now stands for “Almost”, since even the quickest humming birds are unlikely to outpace a fibre connection. Also, the scheme is only really suitable for use in large buildings or clusters thereof, at least until we breed mutant hummingbirds that can outpace jet fighters.

Still, I think the small stepback in terms of speed is more than compensated by the plus points - I see clouds of humming birds flitting around offices, zooming between buildings and imagine taking a tiny paper from the beak of a smiling humming bird in mid-hover, bring it on!
-- DocBrown, Feb 19 2004

RFC 1149 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt
"A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" [Detly, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

P-Mail http://news.bbc.co....ci/tech/1321176.stm
[Detly, Oct 05 2004, last modified Oct 17 2004]

You could build upon the work of David Waitzman, who wrote RFC 1149. See link.
-- Detly, Feb 19 2004


Cheers [Detly] may just do that!

You're right of course [tsuka] there are many aspects that need development - perhaps IFF could be accomplished by implanting a small USB drive in the hummingbird? You'd have to be careful where you put it so as not to imbalance the humming bird in flight but it might work. <approaches frightened-looking Buzz, brandishing USB drive "Gooooood hummingbird - c'mere....">
-- DocBrown, Feb 19 2004


// This new technology solves the problem of spam, since all messages are necessarily one-to one not broadcast. //

What? That doesn't stop spam. One-to-one, you can still receive a single message from a goofy hummingbird saying "Add more to yourself".

Rather magic and naive, I think.
-- waugsqueke, Feb 19 2004


Hmmm....you're right [waugsqueke] - but what's the goofy hummingbird gonna do next? It delivers the message to you, which you presumably then rip up.

Then what? The spammer loses his humming bird to your anti-spambird butterfly net and has to procure and train another one, the message doesn't propogate any further!

I guess spam is still possible but divorced from its broadcast mechanism and costing a trained AIM hummingbird per message, who's going to bother?

I shall take magical and naive as a compliment!
-- DocBrown, Feb 19 2004


I think it would be a beautiful way to exchange short messages, but I think the birds are going to require steroids to be able to cope with some of the attachments I send to my colleagues.

So now we have giant, buff hummingbirds flitting through the office. What happens when they are distracted by the brightly colored blouse of a coworker, and mistake her perfume for a flower ? My message is waylaid, the coworker is annoyed at the least, and the bird is frustrated.
-- normzone, Feb 19 2004


Hummingbird ATM...
-- k_sra, Feb 19 2004


[normzone] giant buff hummingbirds will not be required to deal with attachmemnts - see my earlier note regarding implantation of USB drives. Of course, the hummingbirds will be trained to ignore distractions whilst delivering messages and rewarded with nectar on completion of their journey - there would be no question of blouse/flower confusion.
-- DocBrown, Feb 20 2004


This is a really cool idea. You can create a hummingbird laser printer which prints tiny amounts of sugar which are combined in such a way that the bird knows who to fly to.

Fun idea there.
-- django, Aug 17 2004



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