In today's environment, there is an ever-increasing number of portable devices such as notebook computers, personal data assistants (PDAs), smart phones, portable media players, portable gaming devices and electronic book reading devices (e-book readers). While many of these devices provide for at least one type of network connection, such as a hardwire Internet connection, a Wi-Fi connection, a 3G or other type of wireless connection, etc., there often is not an easy way to share information directly between these devices. For example, a first user viewing a document on a conventional e-book reader cannot easily share the document with a second user on a second e-book reader. In many cases, the first user would have to tell the second user about the document and the second user would have to navigate an interface on the second device to locate the document and then download the document to the device. In another example, a first user of a smart phone viewing a Web site of interest would have to tell a second user of another smart phone the URL (uniform resource locator) or other address of the site, which the second user would then have to manually enter in order to navigate to that site. In still another example, a first user of a portable media player locating a song that might be of interest to a second user must tell the second user about the song, and the second user must then navigate an interface, search for the song using a search query, or perform a similar action in order to locate and access the song with the second device. While other options exist on some devices, such as by the user typing in and sending an email message to a user of the second device, after obtaining and typing in the full email address, there is no simple way for a user to quickly and easily share such content with another user. The problem is exacerbated when there are multiple users in a room who desire to access the content concurrently.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds