Google has just launched a new experimental extension for their Chrome browser, which the company calls Tone. The extension lets you share the URL from your current web browser tab with anyone within earshot. Currently available in the Chrome Web Store, Tone uses sound to transmit the information through speakers and microphones now typically available in any laptop.
Tone behaves similarly to a human voice in transmitting information, hence, Tone's transmissions cannot pass through walls like radio waves, nor does it require device pairing as Bluetooth does.
Google's Research Team says that Tone's first version was very efficient, but sounded horrible. The team then used a codec that would play the sound beyond the limits of human hearing; but since laptop microphones are optimized for voice, this did not work very well, according to TechCrunch.
Tone's current version uses a "dual-tone multi-frequency signaling" system, which is similar to what telephone systems use. This means you will hear a short sequence of beeps once you hit the 'Tone' button in Chrome. A notification prompt will then pop up on the machines that can pick up the sound. Clicking on it will open the shared URL.
"Not every nearby machine will always receive every broadcast, just like not everyone will always hear every word someone says," Google's Alex Kauffmann and Boris Smus explain according to Mashable. "But resending is painless and debugging generally just requires raising the volume."
Tone can send the URL for any web page, including news stories, documents, pictures, blog posts, products, YouTube videos, and search results.
"Tone grew out of the idea that while digital communication methods like email and chat have made it infinitely easier, cheaper, and faster to share things with people across the globe, they've actually made it more complicated to share things with people standing right next to you," Kauffmann and Smus said in a blogpost.
"Tone aims to make sharing digital things with nearby people as easy as talking to them," they said.
