Google’s “Open Project” allows you to sling your Android screen onto a connected touchscreen, simply, and easily.
You may be thinking this somewhat mimics the functionality offered by the (awesome) Chromecast; only instead trying to create an industry standard without another device.
To get started is easy; run the webpage on the computer attached to your screen; scan the QR code on your smartphone; then all your content is ready on the display for your engagement! It’s as easy as Chromecast; but with added touch capabilities.
Whilst currently the project is a proof-of-concept, hopefully it won’t be one of the many which gets buried and never sees any form of retail release for us normal folk!
Today’s blog post from the Google Research team explains the thought process behind the experiment: “Although the computing power of today’s mobile devices grows at an accelerated rate, the form factor of these devices remains small, which constrains both the input and output bandwidth for mobile interaction. To address this issue, we investigated how to enable users to leverage nearby IO resources to operate their mobile devices.”
Using the rising power of mobile devices for usage previously reserved for the desktop; is currently an industry trend. From hardware advancements such as the iPhone 5S’new 64-bit architecture, to software such as Ubuntu for Phones…
The most-popular Linux distro’s mobile counterpart runs on Android devices (naturally) with an intuitive smartphone interface as you’d expect on a standard device; but when docked and hooked up to a larger display becomes the full-fledged Ubuntu.
It’s clearly a popular concept; the first device which attempted funding on Kickstarter – the Ubuntu Edge – broke fundraising records. Hybrid devices such as Microsoft’s Surface Pro further blur the line between what a desktop or a mobile device should be.
The desktop as we know it is changing; replaced by mobile devices which can become desktops, and Google’s latest project prepares to ease that transition through pushing for a wireless standard to mirror applications from its Linux-based Android OS.
What are your opinions about Google’s “Open Project”?
