My Context On Every Device

Two years ago I posted a note on user's context roaming across devices: [http://headworx.slupik.com/2010/05/follow-me-across-devices_29.html]. The subject is more current today than ever before. Because in general we use more than one device. A desktop, a laptop. a tablet, a smartphone, and quite often a smart tv (or set-top box like AppleTV or GoogleTV).

All of the devices have Internet access. But the access today is not enough. We all use one or the other form of cloud services. The most popular are the iCloud or Google / GMail / YouTube. On a single device we are often in the context. Take YouTube, as this is a good example (and still quite platform agnostic, as iOS users still use and consider YouTube an independent service). Almost everybody has a history of YouTube searches, has some favorites and possibly a couple of own uploaded videos.

So what happens when you take somebody's tablet (or better a Smart TV in their living room) and want to show the videos you found yesterday? Aha. Start searching and you either find them or not, trying to remind yourself the keywords. Now why the Smart TV does not let you easily log on to the YouTube with your account? After logging in you would not have to search at all, the videos would be just there. In your history.

I touched on this subject bringing the support for multiple users as the unique feature of the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. But it looks like I will not have to buy a Windows 8 machine. Because the good news is: Android 4.1 (the Jelly Bean) already has multi user support in the core. Still a little rough, but this is very welcome and will be a big selling point against iOS. Especially when it will be consistent across all [Smart] devices, from the coffee machine through a bath water tap to a TV set and a tablet and finally a smartphone.