Community-based content networks and P2P

Nuke Goldstein discusses community-based content networks and P2P in Directions Magazine. From the article: "To illustrate the concept of a community-based content network let's take a look at a hypothetical futuristic mapping service. This service allows applications to connect to standard Web-based content providers as well as to other applications through an alternate peer-to-peer framework. Connected users can access online services to fetch map parts while making those data available to other peers. The community peers actually get data from a combination of Web services and peer sharing through an alternate network (physical and/or virtual). You can sit in a Starbucks, drink expensive coffee and use a map made from geospatial content that was received from other machines in the vicinity. The community content network could be people in the coffee shop, or people in the neighborhood, city and so on. In other words, the data obtained from a Web service may propagate through the alternate community network."