Google and MIT Enable Task Transfer Among Devices 86
An anonymous reader writes "A new software app by Google, developed in cooperation with MIT, enables one-step task transfers between Android Smartphones and PCs. If you are like me, you transfer tasks from smartphone to the desktop the hard way at least once a day, so let's get together and crowd-poll Google to commercialize this app so it's as easy as taking a picture with our smartphone!"
Interesting (Score:1, Insightful)
Still, for about 70% of uses I think Dropbox would work more elegantly.
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So you're going to download some Twitter and a Facebook to your Dropbox so you can monetize the social media experience that you've cultivated through collaborative integration with business-to-business and client-to-business customers? Will you vertically cover all horizontals in your never-ending quest for innovation and venture-funded entrepreneurship? Groupon.
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So you're going to download some Twitter and a Facebook to your Dropbox so you can monetize the social media experience that you've cultivated through collaborative integration with business-to-business and client-to-business customers? Will you vertically cover all horizontals in your never-ending quest for innovation and venture-funded entrepreneurship? Groupon.
You're hired.
Administrative Information Universal
Facilitating high-impact paradigms.
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Re:Only just??? (Score:4, Insightful)
For those who can't be bothered to RTFA
Darn, I'd hoped from the title that there was live migration of running applications between phone and PC so getting back to the office was as easy as switching the current app over to the non-portable's VM. Oh, wait, this is still 2011, we don't have the displays for that mobile work yet. Nevermind folks, nothing to see here.
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If plan9 would come to fruition then that's actually easy to implement. Since processes are files you could just zip it's little memory space over to a new compute node while it's running.
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Well, it's probably only feasible with some type of virtualization. There's been a lot of work done on this in Java, mostly for parallel computing, but it's certainly possible to move a running Java process to another JVM on another computer. With mobile devices we now have the "why" so I think this will happen fairly soon. But it's kindof a hack. There's been work on global address space operating systems, such as Phantom OS [wikipedia.org], which has a single global address space. If you further abstracted that to be
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Funambol is an implementation of industry standards like SyncML, OMA-DM and others, which is why it works with everything from Nokia and Sony Ericsson feature phones to the iPhone. ActiveSync is a Microsoft abomination that should hopefully die out with Windows Phone and Nokia.
Commercialise?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
...lets get together and crowd-poll Google to commercialize this app so its as easy as taking a picture with our smartphone!
Commercialise? Commercialise?!?
How about we get together and crowd-poll Google to release it under a FOSS license so we can take it and make it do whatever the fuck we want it to, and then share it with a couple million of our closest friends?
I'd ask the anonymous submitter to hand in their geek card, but I can't bring myself to believe they ever actually had one....
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I'd ask the anonymous submitter to hand in their geek card, but I can't bring myself to believe they ever actually had one....
And yet some geeks get a bit of a thrill up their leg when millions of typical people rave about their new linux phones.
Tasks (Score:5, Insightful)
How about Google release a functional Tasks app for the Android which tens of millions will use, as opposed to this long-unneeded functionality.
Seriously... no dedicated Tasks app that works offline on Android? What in the world are they thinking?
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ok ok so I read some other comments and apparently
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Try spelling the word properly, if you're looking for people to support your idea.
The OP did spell the word correctly (commercialise). Try getting out of your minority group if you're looking for people to support your idea. Most of the world does not follow Noah Webster's dumbed down revision of the English Language so that idiots can spell incorrectly.
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As the worlds largest English speaking population, The United States of America would like you to know that we do not give a flying rat's ass how you spell your antiquated version of our language.
Thank you and have a nice day.
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Sounds geeky to me... (Score:2)
"A new software app by Google, developed in cooperation with MIT, enables one-step task transfers between Android Smartphones and PCs.
This whole thing sounds geeky to me. I cannot think of a task started on a phone that I would like to transfer to a PC.
Please enlighten me...or else I will be one of those who will propagate the fact that Android *is* indeed meant for geeks.
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What's the deficiency of employing synchronized bookmarks, now possible on both Firefox and Chrome?
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Did you know that with FireFox 4+ on your desktop and your phone that you can browse not just synced bookmarks, but also browse the currently open tabs one the other device and open those tabs? This feature is great for those days when you read half a
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That was exactly my first thought. This sounds a lot like the Chrome to Phone extension.
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Chrome to phone only works one way, only works with firefox and Chrome, and can't send anything else.
You can't send information back to your computer, and no is making plugins for safari, IE, or Opera.
I want a system to send URL's, back and forth between devices, whether they are desktop, laptops, tablets, or phones.
Syncing bookmarks is stupid as you have to transmit 50kb or more to send one text sting. and then you delete the book mark when your done so you have to resend everything again.
I am usi
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Actually the PC to phone has an obvious use-case: Build a custom map on google maps, and then "swipe" the "State" of google-maps to the phone, then you have your custom map/GPS/etc on your phone.
Also another use case would be Photos: (think from high end cameras and phones, with android) take your pictures, then move the "state" of those pics in a gallery app to the PC for easy moving of pics.
Shopping list app from the fridge(that may or may not auto-update itself to what is inside/used) to the phone.
Contro
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Please enlighten me...or else I will be one of those who will propagate the fact that Android *is* indeed meant for geeks.
I would love to be able to transfer my SSH session seamlessly from my Desire Z to my ubuntu desktop. But yeah.. it still counts as geeky
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This whole thing sounds geeky to me. I cannot think of a task started on a phone that I would like to transfer to a PC.
Please enlighten me...or else I will be one of those who will propagate the fact that Android *is* indeed meant for geeks.
Yeah, +1.
This propeller-head wireless stuff is way overkill.
Why can't we just sync over wire to some bloated application that will manage the device, do updates, and perhaps store music?
Chrome OS + Android? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yah, I know, Chrome OS isn't a "desktop" OS, but I could see integrating this with "bookmark sync". Put one device to sleep, and when you wake any 'paired' device, it opens to the same thing. Google Docs, Maps, random website, etc. Chrome OS is a good candidate for this since it's nearly all web-based already.
I could also see Apple doing this with iCloud. Edit a Pages document on your iPad and put it to sleep, and when you get home and wake up your iMac, it has that document already open. Reverse, too. Have a web page open in Safari on your MacBook, put it to sleep, unlock your iPhone, and that same web page is right there.
Heck, Microsoft could do this between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, while they're at it... Pretty much anywhere the mobile and "desktop" are the same ecosystem.
WTF?! Use QRcode already, you flaming idiot! (Score:1, Insightful)
They're saying it will probably only work for web pages, not native apps (unsurprising, since you can't run the native apps on your phone anyway, whatever file you have open may not be synced to your phone, etc.), but that's ok, because mumble mumble cloud mumble.
But it already exists for web pages, it's called a qrcode bookmarklet for your browser, and any qrcode scanner for your phone (which, unlike this Google-only gimmick, exist for platforms other than Android). And just like this, it's extensible to a
Re: Use QRcode already! (Score:2)
Mod parent up! (Though please don't put WTF and idiot in your subject, or you sound like a troll)
Why are we wasting our time with screenshots when this barcode technology has existed for ages. I'm actually surprised that QR codes haven't really taken off in the US--I guess if the iPhone doesn't support it, nobody cares.
Thanks for that bookmarklet--it'll come in handy.
Isn't this a webOS feature? (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought this type of transfer is baked into next week's HP Touchpad and webOS phones. Less of an innovation than catch-up for android.
Firefox Sync (Score:4, Informative)
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I liked Firefox Sync until I lost all my bookmarks due to the piece of shit. I had some of them backed up, but I turned off the feature instantly.
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It may be important to note that Google Chrome/Chromium comes with this feature built in.
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doesn't chrome sync to your google account? doesn't android do the same? what am I missing?
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Too bad the mobile browser on Android doesn't sync with those bookmarks. Mobile Firefox does sync with desktop Firefox.
Serialization (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds like a post from TheDailyWTF.. print it out on a sheet, then take a photograph then paste it into a word doc. Why don't they actually do something innovative, like creating a cross platform VM that uses shared memory across multiple devices, so that apps and memory can move seamlessly across them?. Or maybe just implement some kind of serialization into apps. But nooooo.. They had to go and use SCREEN SHOTS and OCR.
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Samsung alreadymade a limited version commercially (Score:1)
Samsung put a similar - but somewhat limited - version in their own Android market. It involved installing software on Windows. On the phone you'd take a picture of the file or filer in explorer, and it would copy that to the phone (the actual file, not the picture).
Neat idea, but I don't use windows, so no use to me. Can't find it back on my Gingerbread phone, but with Froyo it was in the list.
I am not like you (Score:2)
I can wait the minor amount of time to update ED on what color my shit is right this second
Trusted Sync (Score:2)
This app is interesting, because it doesn't require the PC to know anything about the phone picking up its state, or that the transfer is happening. The phone needs only recognize the URI that the PC is displaying, using the phone's camera and the software.
But what about PC state that isn't in that URI? Like when the onscreen state is composed of more than one URI, like a single window with multiple frames each pointed at a different URL? Or like multiple windows, each pointed at a different URL? Some of wh
Making an easy task harder? (Score:1)
Did anybody else read... (Score:1)
I'm lost again. (Score:2)
I read the article but it looks to me like they are just doing OCR on a URI to "capture" the link to an applet. It then wraps the link into an "icon". Am I wrong?