Google's latest experiment might be the coolest Chrome extension we've seen yet.
Tone, the company's newest homegrown browser add-on, uses sound to quickly share URLs with anyone nearby. The extension is available now in Chrome's web store and can be used by any Chrome user, regardless of what type of computer they have.
In order for the extension to work, it must be installed on at least two computers that are close enough to be "within earshot" of each other and each machine must have its volume turned on. Once the tab you want to share with your neighbors is open, click on the extension in your browser's toolbar, wait for the series of beeps, and the link will be shared to all nearby computers via a Chrome notification.
The browser add-on was created in a single afternoon, Google's Alex Kauffman and Boris Smus write on the company's research blog.
"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 the people standing right next to you," Kauffmann and Smus write. "Tone aims to make sharing digital things with nearby people as easy as talking to them."
In Mashable's testing, the extension worked surprisingly well — the extension was able to detect the beeps from a nearby laptop even when the sound was coming through headphones. The extension is also able to share to multiple computers at once, provided each one has the extension installed.
Behind the scenes, the browser too is meant to act much like actual speech, Kauffman and Smus say, noting that performance may vary based on other factors like distance volume levels.
Because it's audio based, Tone behaves like speech in interesting ways. The orientation of laptops relative to each other, the acoustic characteristics of the space, the particular speaker volume and mic sensitivity, and even where you're standing will all affect Tone's reliability. Not every nearby machine will always receive every broadcast, just like not everyone will always hear every word someone says. But resending is painless and debugging generally just requires raising the volume. Many groups at Google have found that the tradeoffs between ease and reliability worthwhile—it is our hope that small teams, students in classrooms and families with multiple computers will, too.
By Karissa Bell
