To quote its creators, TinCan is "ridiculous."
It's an Android app most easily described as "Twitter without the Internet," sending messages from one phone to another without a connection to a larger system. Messages can only travel between two phones running the app, and it's proximity-based – message senders and recipients need to be very near to each other for it to work.
On a certain level, sure, TinCan is a silly idea. But in cases of emergency or Internet outage, this type of technology could be incredibly useful. It's perfect for sending the same message to the a crowd of people in the same place.
This was initially conceived as a Kickstarter project (watch the pitch video below to learn more), but the company met its fundraising goal and the app is already live in Google Play for free right here.