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'Cut and Paste' Is Out, 'Pick and Drop' Is In
Roland Piquepaille writes "How do you exchange a file with a colleague or a photograph with a family member? Chances are that you cut the desired element and paste it into your e-mail program to send it. Now, imagine yourself in a meeting, picking a file on your PDA with a digital pen and using the same pen to drop it on your friend's laptop screen. This is exactly what Jun Rekimoto and his team at Sony Interaction Laboratory have developed with their 'pick and drop' technique. BBC News looks at this project in Digital pen takes on mouse. Because it's based on cheap and existing components, such a system might be released in the near future, though Sony hasn't announced any plans to do it. You'll find more details and pictures in this overview."
From what I read, the memory is limitless, because the pen is just what is being manipulated.
All the work is done when you tell the "pen server" to acknowledge this click as something you want to pick up. (probably by a button on a stylus)
Then you the next time you tap the pen (or after you click the button on the stylus) it drops it in the next place.
So the pen actually would have any memory.
Check out the paper he submitted at CHI. Also the BBC has a story about this at this address.
In short, the pen doesn't actually store the file, but uses a third server to mark and notify which file should be copied to where...
Several people posting seem to have the impression that this thing is like a USB thumb drive shaped like a pen. It is not a storage device, it is an interface metaphor. The actual data still has to move across a network. It is just a more fluid and intuitive (well fluid and intuitive is a matter of opinion) of telling the systems to transfer data. ie, instead of expilictly transfering the data from the PDA (via hotsync, ftp, nfs, whatever) the pen motion initiates an implicit transfer of data.
Why not fork?
Most bluetooth or IrDA cellphones support swapping business cards using the same standard (vCard) as PDAs and other IrDA compatible devices use. I've used my cellphone at conferences to beam business cards to and from all sorts of handheld gadgets.