Via Earl Mardle’s blog – an interesting story on the development of a tool that seems very very similar in concept to the tool we are developing here in Vancouver.
I’ve even been testing out the metaphor of a “digital pencil” for the Knowledge Age with my colleagues.
Thanks, Earl.
Minority report – Here We Come
No, not the suspended animation stuff, the super cool gloves and the 3D holographic, interactive, all-enveloping display. This from the BBC Digital pen plus Pick and Beam
Dr Rekimoto’s lab has extended the drag and drop technique used in most PC software to create a ‘pick and drop’ technique. So the owner of a handheld computer can pick up a file from their device, using a special pen, and drop it onto the screen of another computer, by placing the pen on its screen. These technologies are very interesting for truly intuitive interaction Ian McClelland, Philips He refers to this approach as ‘direct manipulation’. It allows people to visually select and move information in physical space, rather than having to understand abstract concepts of networks and servers. The pick and drop technique would make it easy for two colleagues in a meeting to exchange files between their laptop computers, new acquaintances to pass each other electronic business cards, or friends to swap references to websites or music tracks they like.Another technique that the labs has developed is referred to as ‘pick and beam’. This uses displays projected onto tables and walls, using data projectors, that act as extended working spaces. Documents can be dragged using a special pen from a computer desktop into these spaces. There they can be spread out or exchanged, allowing people to work with them almost as if they were paper documents.
Remember the mouse “These technologies are very interesting for truly intuitive interaction,” said Ian McClelland, a senior design consultant at Philips Digital Systems Laboratory in the Netherlands.
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