Friday 23 March 2012

SessionFlow - seamless flow of sessions & context across devices


 
Typical pain point – you are chatting/composing message/browsing on your mobile and now that you have reached home, you want to switch to your iPad/your favorite other device.

 
 
Solution – Track mobile device orientation(gyro) change + the GPS location. If one device is getting tilted clockwise relative with the other device just below it (think about water flowing from a jug to a cup), move the session states from the top device to the bottom. Application of this could be numerous - any application context/state that you need to push to another device could be used using SessionFlow. In case of devices without a gyro/GPS, allow for session push using shared WiFi/BlueTooth etc.

 Stuff Required to be implemented :
 
           Client libraries on multiple devices that :
  • can interpret the change in orienatation, location, identify if it’s a SessionFlow request.
  • Push state, session, context etc to the SessionFlow servers.
  • Start target app, apply the received state/session/context to the target device application.  Etc and finally give the update back.
  • Continually push location (lat/lang) to the server. 
         Services that :
  • Allow thirdparty servers to register (see point 3).
  • Push session-flow request to thirdparty server
  • Interpret and identify another device below the mentioned device.
  • Can trigger target devices once a session flow request is received. 
        Session Flow Standards/Protocols for client apps and servers to consume :
  • An entire deck of protocols to be created for communication across systems.
  • Define communication sequences and states.
  • Enable target applications and its service application to use the SessionFlow services and libraries.
Business Angle:
  • Vendors would subscribe to sessionflow servers on the cloud for enabling sessionFlow.
  • They could use client libraries for enabling sessionflow on their device applications or just use the standard we provide.
  • Subscription to be based on number of session-moves.
  • Theoretically this can be enabled for anything – including copying files. 
Challenges:
  •                       Exact interpretation of location, altitude, tilt can get tricky – we don’t want the session to flow to your neighbor one floor below.
  •                      Deducing whether the target device is just below can be complex unless some smart indexing is maintained at the server.
  •                     Expect very high load on the servers due to continuous position tracking. Additionally think of non-server based solutions where two devices just move session using wifi/Bluetooth etc.
 

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