Guest post by Though this technology isn’t incredibly new (the video is dated June of 2006, and OSAlert has covered it before), it’s still not publicly available; however, it’ll supposedly have a beta out for subscribers to test someday. Branded “BumpTop,” this new interface builds off of the idea of organization done on traditional desktops– I mean the wooden, metal, or glass ones. People naturally organize papers and other items into piles that make sense to their own ways of thinking. This kind of organization is limited on operating systems today, but BumpTop makes an old idea new by turning your virtual desktop a little more real.
If you’re like me, a little disorder keeps everything in order. When going through papers, I often organize them into stacks in various areas of my study (on the desk, the floor, on chairs, on printers, on monitors, under the keyboard, etc.), and I can strangely find everything I need when I need it without having to visit the filing cabinet– which is for more permanent residents such as bank statements, warranties, and old manuals I’ll never read.
Though having the basic file and folder interface is very useful with being able to list in order of alphabet, type, size, date, or other as well as the other pluses that come with the traditional file management systems on operating systems today, I would absolutely love to have this interface and believe it would be helpful to better navigate the desktop– at least with how I organize. A hybrid of the two would make me feel warm and fuzzy inside; being able to pick which type of interface that suits each specific folder would make me giddy.
First impression: Cool!
After some thought: How is an application represented in this environment? A browser? pdf-viewer? What happens if you would brows a (traditional)system-direcotry with 1k+ files? How would things like that be managed?
They dont think I would have my /home, /lib /etc /proc or even / in a pile each?
For browsing around my ~ , maybe it would be at least cool, but regarding the questions above, maybe even useful?
Edited 2008-12-12 11:17 UTC
First impression: I remember some german software company introducing something like the paperless office (which is an utipoium since the 60s) in approx 1990, with “Leitz-Ordner” on a shelf, folders and papers. I thought: “Hey, this seems to be something similar.” This software didn’t only try to bring the “desktop metaphor” into a computer GUI, no, it replicated more elements of an office (professional use) such as filing cabinets, faxing machines and such stuff we know from an office.
Potential for a really handy tool for those who are familiar with concepts of how to organize things on a real desk. For those who aren’t, well…
I had a colleague who was very messy. Half of his cubicle was a pile of junk that reached to the top of the cubicle. Whenever he wanted something, he would rummage through all the stuff, throwing things aside until he found it. One day I asked him to find a computer file for me that I’d erased by mistake. It was taking him a while, so I went to look over his shoulder. His desktop was an exact duplicate of his cubicle. It had a massive pile of icons in one corner, and he was furiously rummaging through them to uncover the right file.
Source: http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_icons.shtml
I think the “desktop metaphor” would apply here, and it would require a document-centric approach, so there are no applications for theirselves – they’re referenced by the document type or content; opening a document means to run a specific program and load the file into it for further use. This approach would be a good means to hide the “technical stuff” like applications from the user who does not work with applications anyway, but with documents.
Another approach would be to organize applications like the usual office tools on a shelf or in a drawer, such as staplers, tape, glue or a ruler.
Surprisingly, I assume.
I can just speak from my very individual point of view: Cool – yes. Useful – I doubt… But I’m sure, as I mentioned before, that there’s real potential for some fields of use, even if it’s just a training setting for people with disorders who can’t keep their stuff tidy and ordered.
If you are in the beta program. I havn’t installed mine yet though.
…there’s a reason why my desk is a mess while my computer desktop is clean and tidy.
I’d rather prefer someone to develop a desk that worked like my WM
bumptop is a cool technology demo, but in the end it just piles new problems on top of this old desktop metaphor. I find that, for my personal use, throwing the baby with the bathwater [1] is much more efficient than dealing with the mess of a desktop metaphor.
[1]: http://open-source.ecchi.ca/?voir=articles/killing_the_desktop
there is allready such an product out on the market.
Its called Real Desktop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAYZF6ZFUkU&feature=related Its fairly similar. Allthough the demo video sucks, it shows the same concept.
Wow. That’s a stupid idea. More fitting would be to say that people naturally “organize” their documents into miscellaneous stacks on all available surfaces.
How about developing a junk drawer metaphor instead.
This reminds me of the lowfat demo from a couple of years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkrM4ymkiDo
OK – I need to relate an anecdote that is perhaps appropriate for this topic. Once upon a time, there was a US Government civilian that worked in a US Army Signal organization in Mannheim, Germany. He shall remain nameless here, but those of you who read this and know this person, you will know exactly who I am referring to.
This guy was a high level program manager (I believe he was a GS14). His office was famous, in fact perhaps even a legend. It was quite a large office that he shared with no one. First time visitors were instructed before entering this office to make no comments about its appearance, and for good reason. First, this person was a chain-smoker, and he indulged his habit in his office long after everyone else had to go outside to smoke.
But this was not the real surprise. I can remember being totally flabbergasted on my first visit to see literally tons of papers and folders stacked hap hazardously everywhere within. But the most amazing sight was his conference table, which was over 2 meters in length, and totally covered to a depth of about half a meter with papers and folders arranged in absolutely no discernible order.
So anyway, a visitor might be sitting near this conference table discussing a project with this person, and he would reach into this pile, perhaps as far in as his elbow, and pull out a stack of PowerPoint hard-copy and it would be exactly what he intended to grab on the first shot. Having experienced this first hand, I can tell you it was quite uncanny.
To conclude this story, a new General came in to take over the command, and unlike previous commanders, he would not be dissuaded from checking out this office. After recovering from nearly having a heart attack, he immediately called in the fire marshal and had all of the piles of paper disposed of. The subject of this story retired shortly afterwords.
I relate to you the above story only because I am trying to imagine how he would arrange a desktop on his computer using software such as that which is mentioned in this topic. It is making my head hurt…
I really like this little program and look forward to trying to push more productivity out of it. I’ve always found the current desktop metaphor to be quite lacking.
…blingin’ dollar signs ring in the demo is cooler than the desktop. I just kept watching that part over and over.
Why the heck would you want that? I can’t find stuff on my desk as it is.
Filing on my computer is the one sane place left in my house
Filing on my computer is the one sane place left in my house
You sir make perfect sense. Why try and mash your desktop into a physical analogy. Now you have to dig through piles to get what you want or tell the pile to fan out. All these ideas look cool in the beginning and when you install them and use them for a while you realize that maximizing your file manager and putting files into folders or tagging them with labels is much more efficient. These new 3D approaches are only somewhat better than Microsoft Bob. Remember that one? I’m dating myself here.
In case someone’s curious, here are some screenshots:
http://toastytech.com/guis/bob.html
Don’t miss this “vice versa approach”, too:
http://toastytech.com/guis/desk.html
why should a desktop be restricted by laws of real world (as mentioned above), when we can have more?
This is what I call an utter waste of human resources (and money of course). Did this people realize that what we need are ABSTRACTIONS not “emulation” of real life objects? Computing and science in general work by abstracting things, and putting more useful abstractions on top of that, and so on. What is the advantage of “emulating” what is a mess (in general) in real life such as a good ol’ desktop full of papers? I thought computers were tools to simplify the messy aspects of human life.
The 1990s UI desktop is still better than this. Stop wasting the time of smart programmers and architects on useless projects like this. This is just a graphical demo, no more no less.
My real desktop currently contains several empty beer bottles, three glasses, a bowl, two lighters, two empty packs of tic tacs, three DVDs that I don’t have a clue what’s on ’em, four phones, an oven glove, a newspaper, a box of toothpicks, a pack of floss, three pairs of headphones, a book, a box of chewing gum, some vitamins, and a pack of anti-histamines.
If my computer desktop were anything like my real desktop I’d never get anything done…:)
Edited 2008-12-13 22:26 UTC
My real Desktop usually has a computer on it.
This software is great. It has some bugs to it, but the concept and the implementation, which is extremely important, is great. It works very smoothly. You can have widgets on the desktop that display your pictures (like a frame that hangs on the wall) and you can group and organize your files on your desktop very easily.
The 3d desktop actually just sits on top of your regular desktop. When you launch a piece of software it is like you are launching it from your desktop. I have done no memory benchmarks or anything like that. I have just played around with it. It is cool because it takes all your icons and places them on a 3d plane with physics so you can rotate and scale the icons and stuff like that. I can grab an icon and throw it across the desktop and it will bump into other icons and the wall and create the appropriate affect.
My problem is nothing with the actual program but with the reason. I don’t have a reason for this software. I try not to have anything on my desktop. If anything i have my recycle bin and my computer and my documents. Now i will admit that there are times when i get messy on my desktop, but even then i end up moving things into folders and whatnot that are organized in my documents.
The software is very nice and functions well but I just don’t see a reason for it. Then again if it were ‘the’ desktop and there were no other desktop on the os then it would be fine because it does all the same things as MS’ desktop just more and better and cooler.
One issue i have noticed is that it starts upon windows starting up and I have noticed BSOD a few times when starting up.