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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."
To me it just seems like another one of those novelty items. On the other hand, if they can get it to be as robust and enough mem like thumb drives, they could really take off.
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
The question is, how long before 'pick and drop' is patented and no one else can use it without paying exhorbant liscencing fees.
What's sad about the above statement is it's not meant as humor.
A business card pre-encoded with the contact information for its owner would be cool. Hand someone your card, they touch it to their PDA and hand it back.
Other more permenant uses would also be cool, get train schedules (including changes due to repairs (Those in NYC know just how important that detail is) at the station with a quick touch.
paul reinheimer
So why use the pen at all .... why not use biometrics ... maybe fingerprints .... grab (pinch) a file and move it to the other guys machine .... you would just have to make sure that your finger print is readable on each end.
All Sony electronic products will only support Sony pens, and all non-Sony products will interoperate amongst themselves, but not with Sony devices.
This annoying situation will persist for at least a decade.
A number of posters seem to have missed the point on how it is implemented (not surprising because that is hard to find in the articles). The key concept seems to be some shared space such as a server. The BBC article says:
"The 'pick and drop' system was developed using the Mitsubishi Amity handheld pen computer and a Wacom PL300 pen-sensitive desktop screen.
Pens are given a unique ID, which is readable by the computer when the pen is close to its screen.
When a person taps on an icon with the pen, the computer contacts a 'pen manager' server, via a fixed or wireless connection, and the object is attached to the pen, although the pen itself has no storage capacity.
When the pen tip comes close to the screen of another device, a shadow of the attached object appears on its screen.
Tapping the pen tip instructs the 'pen manager' server to copy the file to that location."
You mean just like CDs did ...? Or perhaps you mean like nurofen (tradename for ibuprofen, granted it's more widespread since the patent lapsed, but it didn't die). Maybe, you mean that it will fade away like ring-pulls ...
Just because something is protected by a patent doesn't mean that it can't be licensed reasonably. Rewarding good, genuinely innovative, ideas is OK in my book.
Of course, this is quite clever as it uses hardware as well as software and so can more easily be patented in places that restrict software patents (which is still true in Europe, whatever the press says).
pbhj