14 DAY TRIAL // Using mobile devices from different categories in concert is not a new concept. However, not many of us have thought about the scenario where you hold your smartphone close to your laptop screen and actually have it work with the notebook. We mean really work together, physically.
Well, a team of creative researchers at the MIT Media Lab has achieved exactly this. They have developed a new software that lets a smartphone suck out a little bit of the laptop’s interface, sort of doubling it.
The new soft is called THAW, and the folks behind the project describe it as being a “novel interaction system that allows a collocated large display and small handheld devices to seamlessly work together.”
On top of providing an extra interface to your computer, THAW comes with its own interactive graphics layer.
The team has showed off a number of possible scenarios involving the extra interface, including one related to transferring files from a PC to a smartphone by dragging the files from one screen to another. Sound sci-fi to you? Take a look at the video below to see it’s possible.
Another one involves playing a game, where the smartphone can provide extra platforms of support for a ball that needs to find its way out of a maze.
THAW is just a research project for now, but with time good things might come of this new MIT Media Lab endeavor.