Rdio recently released an update of their mobile apps, that, among other thing, let you remotely control the playback from another device, but also "capture" the playback and move it to another device. For example, the song that was playing on my iPhone minutes ago now resumed in the background of my iPad.
I really, really like features like this. That is, not only the service remembers where you left it off, but also tells other devices about it so that you can resume at the same location elsewhere. I consider it now essential for any "long form" entertainment, for example books (Kindle, Kobo, etc.) and TV series (Netflix). Amazon even pushed it further by syncing reading and listening locations between the book in written and audio form in what they call "Whispersync for Voice".
I also have to mention another form of entertainment where this feature is often missing: Video games. As an example, many iPhone games also work on the iPad, sometimes even without having to buy an additional "iPad edition", so it would be very useful to be able to switch between the two and resume your game wherever you are. Historically, games could afford to be both very long (40+ hours) and only on a single device, but with more and more "server-side" multi-modal gaming, having no online save file, let alone no automatic backups, isn't acceptable anymore.
Published on November 27, 2012 at 20:33 EST
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