Concept RadioActive allows large-scale audio-based conversations on mobile phones. It functions as a mobile audio forum, where users leave posts by recording voice messages. Other users can navigate through, listen to, and respond to these messages using the audio or optional visual interface. RadioActive's chat space is persistent, allowing users to drop in and out of discussion as they wish. The combined interface is unique for persistent audio chat spaces, and provides an easy way to navigate at a global level. An automated playback mode also allows users to put the device in their pocket and listen passively.

RadioActive's prinicipal focus is to support public discussions within an urban context. By becoming the communications foundation to the eLens project, RadioActive chat rooms can be created for specific buildings or sites tied to visual markers, dynamically formed social groups, and disparate communities.


Current Status RadioActive in its current form is considered functionally complete, and is no longer active research.


Screenshots Version 1
Version 2
Version 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d
5a, 5b


Video BEST - Version 5.5 demo'd at CHI (9.73mb)
Version 4 in eLens - better movie big (58.5mb)
Version 4 in eLens - better movie small (22.3mb)
Version 4 in eLens (not as good movie)


Papers Zinman, A., RadioActive: Enabling Persistent Mobile Communication for Groups. Alt.CHI 2007, April 28 - May 3 2007, San Jose, CA

Zinman, A., RadioActive: Enabling Large-Scale Asynchronous Audio Discussions on Mobile Devices. MS Thesis, MIT, 2006

Zinman, A., Donath, J. Navigating Persistent Audio. Proceedings of CHI 2006, April 21-24 2006, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Zinman, A., Donath, J. RadioActive: enabling mobile-based audio forums. CHI 2005 Beyond Threaded Discussion Workshop.


Technology We've got some pretty cool technologies behind RadioActive, on both the client & server side. We have built a GUI toolkit called Barcelona running in pure J2ME MIDP2/CLDC 1.0 that allows for portable (desktop & mobile) custom GUIs with scalable 2D anti-aliased vector graphics. This allows for ultimate graphical flexibility in writing next-generation J2ME apps, and beats the pants off the tools Sun gives us. RadioActive also uses a custom VoIP-based engine built on top of Shtoom, written in Python, to stream the audio to the clients. All of the tools we use will be available SUPER soon under a LGPL license.


Coverage Slashdot
PC Magazine
eLens/RA in El Pais (spanish nytimes)
eLens/RA in Digg
eLens/RA on spanish blog
Turbulence
We-make-money-not-art


Contact My Home Page
Sociable Media Group