I didn’t have this one prepared beforehand. You see, I have been trying to answer a question about screen sharing from my iPad over the web to other devices. If you will, a reverse Skype or WebEx experience. However, I keep running into the limitation not so much of there not being an app, but that technically, it’s a problem that can’t be solved on the iPad (conventionally; this is probably possible by jailbreaking). It is the kind of thing that gets me thinking again about the way that we use technologies of the screen, and then how we adjust to them or they adjust to us.

Now, in the past, issues with connectivity or media could be solved with adding some software or even a hardware accessory. Need to game, get a better mouse. Need to present, get a web cam and some recording software. Usually speaking, how we go about connecting to one another is a case of taking some base that is close to perfect, and then adding onto it whatever else is needed. I know though that at some point, that approach changed for me. If the device couldn’t do it with minimal changes to the physical space or my behavior, then it was probably acting a bit outside of its design, and I would become more the administrator rather than the user/creator.

So I go back to this question of screen sharing. Now, I could potentially do something where I use the native screen shot taking ability of the iPad to snap screens (press the home button, then the power button at the same time and wait for the photo click) and use Dropbox and a shared URL to a photo gallery to share screens. There wouldn’t be much live interaction happening, but it would pass the screen’s content along. If in the same room as the audience, I could use software like Idea Flight or Mobile Presenter Pro, or even just the native sharing abilities of iOS in AirPlay, to so the screen shot sharing. Again doable, but a lot more steps. Or, I could move to an Android or BlackBerry tablet, where this software might exist and I would just have to deal with any bandwidth or security concerns once I use the screen sharing software.

Living mobile-only, and having moments where by mobile I am looking to solve issues of training, support, and mobile-enablement, these are the kinds of problems that come up and are worth experimenting and investigating to be solved. Then again, it’s only a matter of sharing a screen. Perhaps there is something better than can be done to transfer the message.