You may already have heard about or even used TiffanyScreens, the multi platform application that seamlessly captures your computer's screen-content and sends it to multiple other computers at the same time. TiffanyScreens is great for sharing PowerPoint or KeyNote presentations, or in fact for sharing any screen content at interactive group meetings.

Jeffrey Peacock of the Orange County Embedded Java Users' Group for instance, organizes and chairs weekly meetings, to discuss topics, news, and current projects. The group meets at the local Panera Bread in Irvine, California and uses TiffanyScreens to collaborate. Besides the tasty sandwiches, the group enjoys the free wireless Internet access, which certainly is one reason why the group chose that particular venue.

On the other hand, collaborating, sharing presentations with TiffanyScreens doesn't require Internet Access nor routers, hubs or switches. A wireless network between two or more computers can easily be created using ad hoc networking. Obviously, each participant needs a computer, equipped with a wireless network card and while it doesn't really matter which specific WiFi protocol each one uses, the ad hoc network will be performing best, if everyone uses 802.11g.

On my PowerBook for instance, I start a Computer-to-Computer wireless network, using the Create Network.. Airport menu item. The network's name defaults to my computer's name (wpBook) and the channel defaults to 11.
Everyone else in reach can now connect to my machine but only Macs or Windows computer's with Apple's Bonjour service installed would be able to use TiffanyScreens' convenient autodetect feature, which detects all machines running TiffanyScreens without the need to configure a proxy.

However, with a little extra work, the PowerBook can be configured to not only span a wireless network but also act as a DHCP and Name Server, for the temporary wireless network we want to build.

In System Preferences, click on the Sharing icon and then on the Services tab. Choose Built-in-Ethernet in the Share your connection from drop-down, and check the Airport box, before hitting the 'Start' button. This method provides assigned but private addresses to all computers on the ad hoc network.
TiffanyScreens' auto-detect as any other of its features will work on Windows and the Mac. Ad hoc networking isn't right for every situation but it's really cool for those group meeting at your local Micro Brewery.

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Wolf