BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS — Chip maker Qualcomm has teamed up with DoubleTwist, the creator of one of the most popular media players for Android, to develop a new media streaming service called MagicPlay. The open source protocol will allow any Android device to stream media — including music, movies, and photos — to anything with a Qualcomm chip running the AllJoyn protocol, competing with existing streaming services like DLNA.
There’s a problem I often run into with my mobile devices, and that’s not enough storage space. I insist on purchasing devices with just 16GB of memory, and then I have to find ways to manage that storage the best I can. Some devices will take microSD cards that will allow you to bump their storage as and when you need it, but others — like Apple’s iOS devices — don’t come with that luxury.
Vantec’s new NexStar WiFi hard drive dock lets you bump your smartphone, tablet, and even PC storage over Wi-Fi. You can use it to store your audio and video collections on your home network, then use Vantec’s dedicated apps to access them wirelessly when you need to.
AirPlay is one of Apple’s killer features in iOS or the Mac. As long as you have an AirPlay-compatible speaker or, better yet, an Apple TV in range, you can automatically stream video or audio to another device, all without pairing first.
Now according to a new report, Google wants to not only launch its own bonafide AirPlay competitor, but one-up AirPlay by offering true second screen capabilities to customers using Android devices with their Google TVs.
While it’s not high on visual appeal, new app Android HIFI allows Android users to stream to AirPlay-enabled devices, thus proving once and for all that Android can indeed play nice with Apple technology.
The app works by allowing any AirPlay audio source to play to your Android device, essentially making your device an AirPlay receiver.
If you’ve ever wished you could use Apple’s Airplay functionality with your Google TV, then today is your lucky day. Developer Yossie has managed to piece together a semi-functional app called Airtight. Airtight works much like Airplay (minus the actual “works” part) by allowing you to stream videos and pictures from your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch directly to your TV. The app seems to still be in beta and doesn’t support many features such as:
