'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."

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More information on "Pick and Drop"

[Roland Piquepialle]

I have done extensive research into this subject after discovering it, and I'd like to offer some more information:

Here is the concept of the 'pick and drop' technique, which was demonstrated last April in Vienna, Austria, at the CHI 2004 conference.

Dr Rekimoto's lab has extended the drag and drop technique used in most PC software to create a 'pick and drop' technique. So the owner of a handheld computer can pick up a file from their device, using a special pen, and drop it onto the screen of another computer, by placing the pen on its screen.

The pick and drop technique would make it easy for two colleagues in a meeting to exchange files between their laptop computers, new acquaintances to pass each other electronic business cards, or friends to swap references to websites or music tracks they like.

Rekimoto and his team also developed the 'pick and beam' approach, suitable for lectures. You select an object on your screen and you drop it on a dashboard.

Documents can be dragged using a special pen from a computer desktop into these spaces. There they can be spread out or exchanged, allowing people to work with them almost as if they were paper documents.

You'll find photographs illustrating the two techniques and some others at Sony Interaction Laboratory.