Direct migrator: Eliminating borders between personal mobile devices and pervasive displays

Public displays are important pervasive media in modern cities. Passers-by read information from these displays placed in bus stations, airports, shopping malls, etc. At present, displays are isolated from personal mobile devices. Users can only read information passively, and it is difficult to download any interesting information directly from public displays via personal mobile devices. In contrast, inter-device seamless communication is a trend of the pervasive computing society. In this paper, we explore an effective way to eliminate the borders between pervasive displays and personal mobile devices based on ad hoc wireless communication. We implement a tool which facilitates the process of resource exchange between the two typical pervasive media. Via a pilot study, we demonstrate the advantages of our solution compared with current practices. We believe that this tool could help construct more intelligent pervasive displays or novel social media bringing people together for social activities in the real world.