 Hi, I'm Russell Brandom with The Verge, and today we're looking at Greenstone. It's a sort of weird hardware widget from the chat app Fire Chat. Fire Chat does everything through mesh networking, so if you don't have connectivity to the larger internet, you can just connect directly from phone to phone. The problem with that is there's a really limited range, so unless you have a lot of phones in one place, it can be hard to make any kind of network. So their answer is this thing, which is going to sort of fill the gap between the phones. So you can see there's instructions on the back on how to use it. So this is basically the thing. If you shake it, it lights up to kind of wake it up and look for connections to other phones. The idea is instead of having a lot of phones in the same place, all the phones will connect to this. Now everything's happening over Bluetooth, which doesn't really reach very far. They say 90 feet, which is optimistic, but basically you want a line of sight. It's the same way your phone connects to a smart watch or a headset, any sort of short range wireless tech. So you need a lot of these in one place if it's going to work at all. Their best success has been in basically crowds of people. They do a lot of electronic music shows, Burning Man, that sort of thing. If you get that, it means all of you can be in the same chat room, and the chat room just lives on this. It can hold a thousand messages at once, and it never needs to connect to a cell tower or a satellite or sort of any larger server. Everything's just on your phone and in this guy. And also you can leave and come back. So I could message Jake on this, walk out of the room, Jake comes back and connects to this, and the message would live on this and then send to him, which is great because Bluetooth connections are kind of flaky. So this is still a prototype. They're not selling these, but they're probably going to be handing them out at some electronic music shows over the next six months. It's cool. I'm excited to see if it works. I'm excited.
 Hi, I'm Russell Brandom with The Verge, and today we're looking at Greenstone.
 It's a sort of weird hardware widget from the chat app Fire Chat.
 Fire Chat does everything through mesh networking, so if you don't have connectivity to the larger
 internet, you can just connect directly from phone to phone.
 The problem with that is there's a really limited range, so unless you have a lot of
 phones in one place, it can be hard to make any kind of network.
 So their answer is this thing, which is going to sort of fill the gap between the phones.
 So you can see there's instructions on the back on how to use it.
 So this is basically the thing.
 If you shake it, it lights up to kind of wake it up and look for connections to other phones.
 The idea is instead of having a lot of phones in the same place, all the phones will connect
 to this.
 Now everything's happening over Bluetooth, which doesn't really reach very far.
 They say 90 feet, which is optimistic, but basically you want a line of sight.
 It's the same way your phone connects to a smart watch or a headset, any sort of short
 range wireless tech.
 So you need a lot of these in one place if it's going to work at all.
 Their best success has been in basically crowds of people.
 They do a lot of electronic music shows, Burning Man, that sort of thing.
 If you get that, it means all of you can be in the same chat room, and the chat room just
 lives on this.
 It can hold a thousand messages at once, and it never needs to connect to a cell tower
 or a satellite or sort of any larger server.
 Everything's just on your phone and in this guy.
 And also you can leave and come back.
 So I could message Jake on this, walk out of the room, Jake comes back and connects
 to this, and the message would live on this and then send to him, which is great because
 Bluetooth connections are kind of flaky.
 So this is still a prototype.
 They're not selling these, but they're probably going to be handing them out at some electronic
 music shows over the next six months.
 It's cool.
 I'm excited to see if it works.
 I'm excited.