bumptop

Vista has surely spiced up things a bit, as far as user interfaces go, and Mac's new Leopard is really beautiful. But how about rethinking the whole desktop and the ways one can interact with it? Anand Agarawala has done exactly that, with BumpTop, a physically-based, casual user interface that pushes the desktop metaphor with physics, piles and the pen. For the more inclined, Anand's Masters Thesis (Enriching the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen) and a paper co-authored with Ravin Balakrishnan say it all.