Spatially aware devices from Ishac Bertran on Vimeo

If you have a smartphone, especially an iPhone, you’ve probably heard about the bump app, where you can transfer contact info from one phone to another by bumping the phones together. Magic!

In this article it is explained how Ishac Bertran takes this concept even further, and while there is no bumping motion, the idea is that when you bring two of your devices together they sense each other with a half circle appearing on each device visualizing the connection. Then you can just drag and drop stuff from one gadget to the other. Easy-peasy!

Unfortunately this is not a reality yet, but it’s definitely on its way. Two students at MIT are working on Swÿp (pronounced swipe) a “piece of open-source software that facilitates cross-app, cross-device data exchange using physical ‘swipe’ gestures”. They are developing their application using technologies the devices already have. The idea is that it should work on any device that is touch-enabled and has WiFi. This means that you would only have to place the two devices beside each other, enable the application and swipe away!

Watch the video below to see how these MIT guys envision it.