By Although near field communication technology isn’t standard here in the states yet, the Nexus S has excited many a scholar, including two gents from Stanford who set out to show how apps utilizing NFC can help you share things between your colleagues and friends at the “bump” of a phone.
The first is a collaborative whiteboard application – Junction. Someone can start up a whiteboard session on their Nexus S and an additional user can be added by the two simply putting their phones together.
Another use case shows how one user can send a photo to another. By opening the photo in the phone’s gallery and putting your phone against another, the host phone will automatically upload the photo, while the client phone receives that link and is able to download it from the internet.
It’s great seeing creative minds use NFC technology for things other than mobile payments and “enhanced physical advertisement” – the main things Google wanted to push in their NFC movement that began with the release of the Nexus S.
I hope more developers catch on and develop these sorts of things so that NFC-powered social applications are just as plentiful as PoS installations once the technology takes off. What are some apps you would like to see? [via Engadget]
What is the range of NFC for the whiteboard app? I’d imagine you’d need to keep the phones fairly close to each other for the communication link to stay active.
OR…. could the NFC “bump” just get the connection information and then use the mobile or WiFi network for maintaining the link… That would be nifty if it would work over a long period of time and large distances.
@Joedon3 I think the initial bump sends a connection link to the client device, then everything else is handled over a wireless data connection from there. (Hence the delay when they demonstrated the actual whiteboard.)
I completely agree with the number #3 guy!!
Can anyone say gay!
Can anyone say 12 years old?
Nice app