Three degrees is new software that connects small, tightly knit groups of people who know and trust one another. Three degrees is one the first real-time technologies that lets users connect online while extending real-world social interactions.

Though the tool has been available since 2003 it has remained quite unknown to the public at large until now.

Three degrees integrates innovative ideas that may provide you valuable clues about features and traits of the up-and-coming social interactions of tomorrow.

3° alllows the creation of groups having a maximum of nine people. Each 3° Group appears on the Windows desktop as a very visible, large icon.

When right-clicked, the Group icon provides direct and immediate access to all the Group features. These include:

• Musicmixing


• Image sharing


• Winking


• Instant Messaging (via MSN Messenger)


• Inviting

MusicMixing
MusicMix is a small shared music player application that all active online users in a group can use to share any audio track or recording with everyone else. Musicmix is similar to the experience of listening to music in a room with a small group of close friends and family. Members of a 3° group can use musicmix to listen to music together, while all in separate locations and while using separate computers. Any group member can change the playlist or use the playback controls.

Everyone is hearing the exact same thing. If you are listening to an interview and one in your group has not understood a certain passage, you can rewind back and go through it again with everyone else.

While anyone can listen to anyone's else music tracks everyone keeps her own music. Shared songs cannot be saved locally, and 3° provides a direct link to shop for them online. If your friend adds a song to the playlist and you don't have that song in your Windows Media Player 9 Series Media Library, the downloading process may take a little time. The song title is shaded until downloading is complete. During this time, the WMA, MP3, or WAV file is being transcoded to a 64 Kbps WMA file, custom encrypted, and transferred to everyone participating in the session.

Image sharing
Images can be easily shared by dragging and dropping them onto a Group icon. The following file formats are supported: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, and .png .

Winking
You can send animated gestures and emoticons to your group partners. They appear on everyone's desktops, play, and then fade away. Winks can be animations or still images. These visual gestures are called winks. Winks can be downloaded from the centralized threedegrees.com Library or created anew by users.

Real-time communication and instant messaging
Initiate real-time collaboration activities such as text chat, VoIP or file sending via MSN Messenger.

Inviting
You can invite up to 10 of your online MSN Messenger contacts to join your 3° group. You can also invite other people who are not part of your MSN Messenger buddy list and they will be in turn invited to download and setup their copy of MSN Messenger.

Issues:

• 3° and its P2P create quite a bit of inbound and outbound Internet data traffic even when you are not actively interacting with your Group.
• There is no easy way to transfer groups from computer to computer for now.
  Do I get to keep the music my friend shares with me?
• To add music tracks or other audio recordings to the MusicMix list you need to add those tracks to your Windows Media Player Media Library.
• Must be running and logged into MSN Messenger when starting 3°
• Computers on a network that uses a network address translator (NAT) to share the Internet connection, may encounter problems using 3° if
  a) computers on the home network are members of a domain,
  b) there is a domain controller on the network,
  c) the computer is configured to use a Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) server.

Evaluation

Overall 3° showcases a new and interesting cutting-edge approach to social networking and small group real-time interaction online.

Microsoft has smartly leveraged several components and features of 3° to achieve greater lock-in via requiring :

• Use of Windows XP


• Use of Windows Messenger


• Passport sign-up


• Windows Media Player adoption


• Enforces your access with a specific Logon in Windows (no Guests)

From this point of view. You're caged into a Microsoft world.

From the viewpoint of seeing some very progressive application of P2P this is something definitely worthwhile exploring.

Recommended.

System requirements:
Pentium
256 MB RAM
Windows® XP Service Pack 1
MSN Messenger
Windows Media Player
High-speed Internet connection

N.B.: 3° uses new peer networking technology that is only available on Microsoft Windows® XP Service Pack 1.

Windows Peer-to-Peer Networking is an operating system component that enables the creation of new peer-to-peer (P2P) applications for computers running Windows XP (Service Pack 1 and later). P2P applications can utilize the powerful personal computers that exist at the edge of the Internet to create exciting, distributed experiences. P2P networking can also allow existing applications to work together in new and useful ways

3° requires IPv6 to connect to the Internet, rather than IPv4. Generally, computers use IPv4 to connect to the Internet. The IPv6 protocol and firewall are installed on your computer as part of the Advanced Networking Pack for Windows XP, which is required for 3°. For more information about configuring IPv6, resolving firewall connectivity issues, and peer-to-peer networking, see article 817778 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.