Comments: 10

Jul

21

2008

Desktop Of The Future by gracej

In your real physical work space, documents are structured, marked, organized, and construed to contain subtle informative cues that help us tremendously in processing our daily work load. Such expressive cues are lost when translated into the virtual world. If your computer desktop is anything like mine, it is most likely littered with non-descript uniform icons with names that doesn’t really reflect the essence of the documents. If your computer desktop is anything like mine, I would not poke those file with a ten-foot pole, in fear of loosing myself in miles of data I can not extrapolate myself from. Why can’t my computer desktop resemble the ease and usability of my desktop at work? Well, actually, Anand Agarawala, recently created BumpTop, which promises to bring the interactivity, the quirkiness, and the logic that exist on your desktop at work to life on its virtual counter. Some of the images below capture my favorite features of this computer desktop.

Desktop Of The Future

Crumpling documents into crumpled paper state before deletion might be ultra useful as a way of organizing file.

Desktop Of The Future

File on the desktop can be made into neat piles that then can be manipulated in various ways to be examined. This particular command allows one to browse pile by fanning out the content.

Desktop Of The Future

One of my favorite feature of this application allows one to place weight and emphasis on a particular file by enlarging the file, that then literally takes on physical weight and can not be moved by smaller lighter objects.

What other suggestions do you have to improve your computer desktop interface and experience?

10 Responses to Desktop Of The Future

  1. David Podgursky says:

    i see too many people that put EVERYTHING on their desktop or all their “bookmarks” are links on their desktop… that takes up a LOT of space on the harddrive plus is very un-computer-feng-shui

    Just keeping folders even layers and layers deep is helpful … if you’re a desktop junkie then just put the most used in site, not every single file!

  3. Caleb says:

    I always keep my desktop really clean, the only items I have on my desktop on my Mac right now are my hard drive and external hard drive :).

  4. Tom says:

    @David “that takes up a LOT of space on the harddrive”
    Links (.lnk)’s are very small, a few kilobytes at most

  5. Bayen says:

    I don’t have any desktop icons… Alt-F2 and type in the name of the app I want to run. Yay Linux!

  7. Beverly Hills Real Estate says:

    I hate it.

    I’m a card collector and I have a hard enough time trying to find particular card in stack cards then lose one on my virtual desk top.

    Conceptually, I think it’s neat but not practical for the everyday user. Maybe it would be better for some sort of service menu on a commercial level…

    I’ll just stick to the tried and tested.

    -Nick deVere

  8. Zenanon says:

    Sure, because why have all of your icons in a simple and organized 2D display when you can have a stupid and unnecessary 3D version that takes up a lot more system resources?

  9. California Geek says:

    There is nothing revolutionary about this.

    and i saw this guy’s presentation and he was kinda full of himself and hasty in explaining his stuff to the people.

    Pretty lame i would say!

  10. kevin says:

    I agree with many other reviewers that this type of interface is unnecessary. I think that advocates of this interface overlook the capabilities of the existing directory structure interface used by virtually all operating systems. Using hierarchical directories provides the ability to be incredibly well organized using a simple two-dimensional interface. Personally, my computer files are far better organized and easy to access than any of my physical files.