Freebrain : a distributed and scalable interest-based instant group communication system
Kalpak Dilip Kothari · DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) · 2002
Freebrain is a distributed and scalable interest-based instant group communication system that enables people and on-line databases or services to share their knowledge in a personalized way with those seeking help. The Freebrain architecture resembles a publish and subscribe system. People and databases subscribe to categories of questions they are interested in answering. When a user asks (i.e., publishes) a question, an invitation is routed to the subscribers of the categories that match the content of the question. Human invitees can choose to enter a group conversation to answer the question. Machine invitees (on-line databases) can directly return results. The system achieves load balancing and fault tolerance using Chord for its subscription distribution. Instant-messaging (IM) is achieved using Jabber, an open-source, distributed, IM system. The main contribution of Freebrain is a powerful, new paradigm that enables users to obtain real-time answers from both people and on-line services using a single, unified IM interface without requiring any prior knowledge of