Google just bought the startup BumpTop Technologies which provides the small but incredible app BumpTop for Mac OS X and Windows. It is a 3D-Desktop, which allows you to stack and manage your files just like you do it on your real desk. You have full access to all the standard features, the Finder comes with. BumpTop also shows the often used files bigger, which helps you to “find” what you are looking for.
BumpTop Technologies published a message on their website, that a free version of the app will be available to May 7, 2010 for download. Then there will be no active download links left. I guess there will be major ideas at Google to use this technology. For instance they can tune up Google wave or just try to make their very own OS. It’s not a stupid idea, since we have seen them trying to make money with a mobile phone.
BumpTop was developed by computer scientist Anand Agarawala in context of his master thesis at University of Toronto in 2006. He founded the company BumpTop Technologies on basis of this software.
2 Comments
Pete I.M.P. wrote:
Here’s a man promoting a function he himself regarded as pointless when it was introduced in 2008 by apple in MacOS X 10.5 Snow Leopard.
I am talking of course about the quite useful desktop extension spaces. The main difference between spaces and this is that spaces doesnt come in 3D but it’s basically the same thing.
Despite the fact that bump top app surely is a hardware hog it is considered noteworthy by our apple fanyboy no #1 and therefore good simply because it is 3D. When it was only available in 2D it wasn’t any good. 3D cool, 2D boring.
What a hypocrite.
Sgt. Floyd Pepper wrote:
I don’t think that you catch my drift. BumpTop and Spaces are not the same extensions for our desktops. They work in different ways. Spaces extends the desktop very powerful while BumpTop just adds a graphical gimmic. Spaces improves the usability and workflow during the daily work progress. A 3D-Desktop couldn’t provide that much of an improvement. It just eases the way we organize our desktops. More like a joke it could look like a real desk with piles of documents laying on it.
Some years ago I read about a Concepter at Apple, who trademarked a sketch of a 3-dimensional desktop. The idea was to create an environment which isn’t just organized through layers but through visible space. This brings a much bigger understanding of “the machine” than a 2-D environment. I fact we are already working in a 3-D space (according to the layers), but we just can’t see it.
By the way: I am using Spaces right now. Or at least I try to. But I can learn.