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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."
This is a great step towards a more social use of computers. Instead of being bogged down with components and using hardware to move files around, it looks as though presenters will be able to quickly move through lectures or presentations without having to mess around. This seems much more seamless to me, and natural. Imagine gaming with the pick and drop scenario. I'm an amateur game designer and this is opening a whole new field of dreams for me... like maybe a better way to interract with film, in theatres, or the advent of much better interactive social gaming.
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This sounds like what Tom Cruise was doing in Minority Report with those fancy computer gloves.
How long will you have to keep your "pen" connected for the data to be transfered. If you're going to have to hold your hand there for a while for bigger files you mind as well just use other methods of data transfer.
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
I wonder how this works, and how the PDA would differentiate between more than one stylus. The only solution I can think of is there would need to be some sort of data storage capacity in the pen. They already charge you $10-$40 for a piece of plastic shaped like a pen, who knows how much it will cost when it has a miniature hard drive and wifi connectivity in it.
I suppose that someone should play devil's advocate and point out that this will revitalize the old "dirty disk" transmission vector for virus's and other malware. Where it use to be, "Don't put that disk in your PC, its got a virus on it", now it'll be "Don't touch me with that thing, its dirty!".
Subsequent invention of a small, slip-on firewall is pending...
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
What does this do that I can't do with cut&paste?
When i need something on another computer, it's always a file anyway, which I can put on my LAN (Like 1GB+). This just seems like a waste of time when we already have a simple way of doing it.
So now my stylus will be able to store data and copy it to another device? A "smart" pointer?
I read that as equating to $$$ when I lose the bloody thing.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
Then it won't matter, because no-one else will use the technology and it'll just quietly fade away.
No, typical interfaces used to exchange information are impractical or clumsy. Well designed interfaces are not. Back before my Palm died I used to use beam-it to exchange files with other palm owners using the IR link. While the user interface was far from optimal, it was far from being impractical or clumsy.
Setting up a "pen manager server" just so I can exchange files is impractical and clumsy.
Best quote in the BBM article:
Dr Russell Beale, of the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said it was "toys for the boys".
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"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." I can't tell if the pen actually is screen location sensitive, or if it just sends the file to the destination machine? In other words, is it actually a copy and paste across two computers, or is it just a clunky way to send files?
Will sony open source it?
Probably not
Will MS support it?
Eventually yes
Will they give these pens out for free?
No - did you get your computer for free?
Will anyone actually use it?
Yes
Any more inane questions?
Given the Sony approach to a device that has a unique ID that can be tracked through some kind of communication, I don't know why they don't simply take the opportunity to stuff the "pen" with the data. The demo talks about handheld to handheld, so it's not likely to be huge amounts.
In either case, the device is an intermediary, that could be built into anything most people have with them at all times. Cellphone, for example.
No memory, it just passes a handle and you computer gets the stuff from a server.
I'm not sure what advantage it gives over just making the PDA, or whatever, do the job directly. The pen is just another thing to break/lose/have stolen.
Actually, what we should have is IR on the PDA and a tilt switch inside. Then you could pour the data from yours into your friend's. Bummer when you spill your address book on the floor though.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Another novelty? I had a PalmPilot and then a PocketPC, and the number of times I "beamed" my contact information could be counted on one hand.
Back in '92 in a High School computer class after some serious concentrating on coding, I looked over to a friend's PC next to me, and instinctively tried to move my mouse cursor over to his PC to show him an error. At the time, I felt silly for doing that. In hindsight, my subconscious actions might have led to a similar innovation.
Now on a related note, I found that after hours of playing Castle Wolfenstein (back then), I had the urge to push on every brick wall I found to see if there was a hidden room behind it.
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Oh great, now BB will setup scanners to see what's on all of our digital pens. /* :) it's Friday */
Halliburton -- "Everybody owns a share"
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So basically an item is selected then xfered to a "pen server" with the unique ID of the pen that selected the item attached to the object. Then next time the pen interacts with a screen, the pen server gets polled and whatever resource is currently in there for that pen gets put up on screen.
Seems like a lot of extra infrastructure to me.
Why not just place a small memory card inside the pen? When the pen selects an object, that object is copied into the memory space of the pen.
Then you don't have to worry about servers or a wireless network infrastructure. You could use a simple bluetooth setup to communicate between pen and pda/laptop/or other device.
Plus you could have like a fixed-object or long-term object stored in the pen, such as a business card or other contact information.
The only hurdles would be providing power to the pen itself. It'd probably wind up about the size of a typical ball-point pen, rather than the slender size of today's typical styluses (styli?) for PDAs.
Certainly the static objects could be implemented using something similar to rfid where the object is hard-coded and the rfid signal is enough to retrieve the information.
Marf.
The pen could become a whole class of functionality to itself. You could scan a document by running the pen sideways on piece of paper, then deposit it in your PDA. You could take a photo. You could use an accelerometer to record whatever you're writing.
It makes for new ways of communication, too. You could ship someone a document inside the pen. Write a digital letter to your loved one, storing it inside the pen. (Then mail the pen.) You could sign for a package by tapping your pen on the FedEx guy's tablet PC.
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I use Tokens to exchange any size files with my family and friends. So, I can e-mail a Token that contains a reference to some videos and pictures (the size of which easily exceeds the size of an e-mail attachment). The receiver can redeem the Token. No more fiddling with sending CDs through the mail with the latest pictures and videos of the kids. For more information or to try it out:
http://www.creo.com/tokens
The idea of requiring connectivity to a shared "pen manager server" and unique IDs on all pens, is so much more complex and messy than just sticking the data in flash inside the pen. Their solution is worse than this "mistaken assumption".