I am posting this to raise awareness of the detail that collaboration across the Internet—and presence monitoring—were possible with People Near Me (and its associated technologies) in Windows Vista. Note that the scenario relies on each user adding each other as a Trusted Contact (another "Longhorn" detail).
An Example of Real-World People Near Me
PNM, while it contains an executable, requires another application to leverage its capability.
The following scenario illustrates how PictureViewer can use PNM to provide collaborative features:
Tom installs PictureViewer on his new notebook computer running Windows Vista. The installer registers PictureViewer with PNM.
Tom takes his notebook computer to a coffee shop and signs in to PNM. When he is signed in, p2phost.exe begins discovering other nodes in the PNM mesh.
Harry, who also installed PictureViewer, is also at the coffee shop with his notebook computer. When Harry signs in to PNM, his instance of p2phost.exe begins discovering other nodes in the PNM mesh.
Harry and Tom were high school classmates and have not seen each other in many years. They recognize each other from across the room, and begin a conversation. Harry offers to show Tom pictures of his family.
When searching for the pictures, Harry realizes that he hasn’t downloaded the latest pictures of his family from his camera, and he offers to show Tom the pictures later.
Tom decides to show Harry some photos of his family, and starts PictureViewer. Since PictureViewer is integrated with PNM, he invites Harry, through PictureViewer, to look at pictures of his family.
After Tom sends the invitation to Harry, Harry receives a notification on his taskbar that Tom has invited him to start PictureViewer.
Harry accepts the invitation, and PNM starts PictureViewer. After PictureViewer starts, pictures of Tom’s family appear on Harry’s instance of PictureViewer.
Harry promises to show Tom the pictures of his family in the future through PictureViewer. To this end, Harry adds Tom to his contact list by selecting menu items in PictureViewer. Tom does the same.
Some time in the future, Harry and Tom are both away on business trips in different cities. Harry signs in to PNM and opens PictureViewer. He immediately notices that Tom has signed in to PNM also.
Since Harry has downloaded the latest pictures of his family, he invites Tom, through PictureViewer, to take a look at the pictures.
Tom receives and accepts Harry’s invitation. Upon the acceptance of the invitation, PNM launches the PictureViewer app. After PictureViewer starts, Tom sees the long-awaited pictures of Harry’s family.
While PictureViewer may not be the most efficient means to share photos, this story sufficiently tells the PNM story. In each of these steps, PictureViewer is leveraging a different part of the PNM API.