Nexus Q Ideas
After chatting with Billy Rutledge yesterday I’ve got a few ideas spinning for how people could use the #NexusQ so I thought I’d put them out there as they seem to revolve around one theme; The Q as a hub device.
Multiplayer gaming could use it as the server/co-ordinator for multiple devices running on the same WiFi network so that no-ones individual device needs to be nominated as the primary device (and take the processing hit), and any peer-to-peer co-ordination alogrithms could be offloaded onto the Q creating a star topology instead of a mesh, which tends to be more efficient.
The next couple of ideas play off the lazyness of most people (me included), and will be of benefit to those who end up having it as an always-on device;
There’s also the concept of using it as a local store. Where individual users can use it to store messages and files to share with other users who’ll use the same network. That way users won’t need to have their devices on at the same time, or even be in the same place at the same time.
The last idea I’m going to share right now is as a local two-way cache. Apps could make use of it as a stop off point for long uploads or downloads (e.g. backups and subscription data such as magazines and videos). Apps and users could send data to the Q over WiFi with an internet endpoint as the final destination, the Q would could then forward that data on without requiring the users device to be on, so a 300MB backup could be quickly sent to the Q, the user turns off their tablet, and the Q then handles forwarding that on to the endpoint.
Working in the other direction apps could run on the Q and cache periodical content, then when users connect to the network their devices would see the Q has a new data release for them and pull it down to their device over WiFi. This becomes even more useful when there are multiple users in the same house who get the same periodical data.
A lot of this could be made simpler by the Q getting a #JellyBean update and using WiFi service registration and discovery (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/nsd/package-summary.html), but I’m sure that’ll come.
So what do people think? Have you got some other ideas you want to share?