What is EnThinnai?  
     
EnThinnai is your front porch on the web where you can store and display information that you can share with your designated buddies. From EnThinnai, you can exchange notes with your buddies, you can share files with them; they can initiate a communication session directly from the browser (using WebRTC); you can tell them how they can contact you. Also, we will be adding other capabilities incrementally. In many respects, social networking sites offer many, if not all of the features. But in one respect, EnThinnai stands out: on other sites, your buddies have to belong to the network to be your buddy; that is not necessary in EnThinnai. If other social networking sites are like a bazaar or a bar where you meet your buddies, EnThinnai is the veranda in your house where you invite your buddies in. It is in this respect we call EnThinnai to be an "un-Social networking" application.
     

Identification
     
You identify yourself and your buddies using OpenID, "an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity". There are many providers of OpenID (like Google, Yahoo, Verisign Labs) and you can use any of them. But please make sure that they are dependable and secure. It is also possible for you to be your own OpenID provider. You can get more information at their organization (www.openid.net).

It is likely that some of your buddies may not have an OpenID or may not be comfortable in using it. In such cases, the system allows you to assign a "pseudo-OpenID". They will use this ID when visiting your EnThinnai. But keep in mind that, this is less secure - since the ID is not authenticated, anybody who knows this ID will be able to access the information you are sharing with this person. The pseudo-OpenID is of the form: www.enthinnai.com/unauopenid/, where you assign a unique string for each of the buddies.
     

Buddy List
     
EnThinnai maintains a list of your buddies identified by their OpenIDs. Only those who are in your buddy list can access your EnThinnai. In this respect, the buddy list acts as a whitelist for data elements in your EnThinnai. You can give an Alias name to your buddy and the system will display the alias name rather than the OpenID. The system allows you to reuse the Alias name; you have to make sure that the Alias names are unique.

Buddy status is not mutual. A person can declare you to be a buddy even though you have not declared her to be your buddy. This emulates the real world behavior where you give your number to another person, even though they may not share theirs.

You can group a bunch of buddies into a group. The groups can be collapsed or expanded to display the list of all the buddies. The groups and the Alias names within a group are sorted alphabetically.
     

Availability Status
     
The system allows you to set your availability status that will be displayed to your buddies. Unlike other applications that maintain the Presence information based on the user activity, in EnThinnai you have to specify your status. This status is called the Global status. As a default the Global status will be reported to all the buddies. You can override the default status by assigning an alternate status. You can modify the reported status for a whole group or to individual buddies. The availability status for a group defaults to the Global status and that for a buddy defaults to that of the group.

Adhering to the security philosophy of "Default Deny", your availability status will be notified only to those in your buddy list. Others, whether they are EnThinnai users or not, will not be able to get access to your availability status.
     

Notes
     
Sharing a note is very similar to sending an email, but without many of its annoying aspects. Just like email, you can send a message (with rich formatting) and include attachments. Unlike email, the attachments will be stored in the sender's EnThinnai and will be downloaded by the recipients as and when they are needed.

In the current version. the file(s) can not be larger than 100 MB.

Here also EnThinnai adheres to the security philosophy of "Default Deny". Accordingly, only those in your buddy list will be able to send you Notes. Others, whether they are EnThinnai users or not, will not be able to send Notes to you. A person with whom you have shared Notes can not forward the Note.
     

File Sharing
     
You can share files with your buddies. This is a specialized version of the Notes application with a custome designed user interface that simplifies sharing of files.
     

Contact Information
     
You can store many of your personal and contact information in EnThinnai and allow your buddies to access them. Some of the information that you can store include phone numbers, IM addresses, email addresses and postal address. For each piece of information, you can specify the buddies who can access it.
     

Logs
     
EnThinnai maintains a log of buddies' request for the availability status.
     

Non-EnThinnai Buddies
     
Unlike other applications, your buddies need not subscribe to EnThinnai; it is sufficient that they have an OpenID and you have added them to your buddy list. They will be able to log into your EnThinnai and access only that information that you have decided to share with that buddy.
     

New Features
     
In the near future, we will be adding new and exciting features like Photo album and Calendar.
     

Business Model
     
Our business model is to license this application to ISPs and WiFi router manufacturers so that they can install this application in their Customer Premises Equipment. We are also exploring partnership with ISVs on behalf of their enterprise customers.
     
 
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