For those of you who were original Zune 30 owners in 2006, you may remember in the first iteration of that device and service had a feature called "Squirting". While hands down the worst name ever given to a function it was ingenious at the time. Basically it allowed you to share music with other Zune players via WiFi, something that was as far as we know not done at the time by anyone else. The Zune would detect other Zunes within 30 feet and allow you to effortlessly send over a song (or photo, podcast). After three days though (or a couple plays) DRM'd music would disappear--Microsoft wasn't inventing illegal file sharing for mobile here, folks. While brilliant, many complained it didn't go far enough (what about video?) and for various reasons, "squirting" was phased out.
Now rumor-starter MS_Nerd has Tweeted that Microsoft is bringing back "squirting", albeit with a new name simply "beaming". What's more, it will reportedly use NFC, WiFi and Bluetooth (depending on the devices) and will work seamlessly between the Xbox 360, Windows 8 and Windows Phone. It's not clear when this would happen e.g. Windows Phone "Tango" (early 2012) or Windows Phone 8 aka "Apollo" (second half 2012) nor what types of media would be allowed to be transferred.
Couple of things. Is this rumor legit? There's no confirmation, but in the video above from Infusion/Microsoft's 'The Future of Retail Banking' video, you can clearly see "beaming" in action between Windows Phone and a TV and then later, a tablet--perhaps this is what MS_Nerd was referring to in the first place? Regardless, it seems fairly obvious that Microsoft has Squirting v2 in mind. In addition, if Microsoft isn't thinking of rolling this out then shame on them because everyone else is doing nearly the same thing with NFC on board (e.g. Android, Nokia N900) and they did sort of pioneer such technology back in 2006.
We'll have to wait till 2012 though to see if any of this happens, but if we were a gambling site, we would put our money on Microsoft bringing this to their '3 screens'.
via: LiveSide
