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Google Acquires BumpTop Desktop
TuringTest writes "BumpTop, a company that provides a multi-touch physical desktop metaphor, has been acquired by Google and made to 'no longer be available for sale.' BumpTop provides a direct way to handle information through simple gestures. Some media see this acquisition as a movement by Google to position against the iPad. Will BumpTop be ported to Android?"
It'll languish for a few years, the main people behind it will quit, and we'll never see it reach its potential.
I multi-touched your mom.
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It's desktop software, right? Isn't it written in C? Doesn't work on Android, right?
They seem to have been loving shipping Bumptop on all their touch-enabled PCs and laptops. I wonder if this will change things for them.
You mean BumpityBoo's mommy?
I have always been fascinated with the "3d" desktop ever since, yes I'll admit it, Jurassic Park. That Irix program, I don't remember the name, but I have made it a point to try out all kinds of crazy 3d desktop apps, but I've found they are largely useless. They look cool often, but in general, they slow things down, eat resources, and usually just sit on top of the desktop instead of being shell replacements. What I've found more useful are the apps like rainmeter and those kinds of programs. Look at all the lifehacker posts of desktops, how many use 3d? Now I will say I tried bumptop and it was one of the better ones, especially the "mouse pattern" ability to control icons, but being a gamer I couldn't justify the extra resource usage. On a side note, one of the random weird programs that I shouldn't have liked but did was some old sonyu program that came on the vaios, that was all black and red and could organize things in a helix shape, I never could find it again, anyone remember that?
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
I saw this at least three days ago. Either this is a dupe story or I saw it in my SlashBoxes three days ago.
Maybe I'm getting old (in fact, I AM getting old :-) ) but, seriously, I think all that touch interfaces are great... for very specific uses.
Yes, to organize "piles" or to zoom in/out photos, maybe it's ok... But to everything else, my good old mouse is still my choice. Please note that I'm NOT talking about smartphones or othes small pocket devices, where touchscreen is a real improvement (althought the phisical keyboard in my Android phone is essential). But for the so-called "tablets"? To read a magazine or newspaper; to see some pictures, OK. But for everything else, please give me my full keyboard and my mouse and I'll be happy. What makes me see two very different products: the living-room-reading-and-playing-appliance; and the computer. Two different entities that will live together for a long time.
--- Illogical Spock
I hear about google aquiring a new company almost every week now. They should change their motto from "Don't be evil" to "You will be assimilated."
I like Google as much as everybody, though late with their "updated" search screen maybe not, but this seems like the thing Microsoft would do.
They buy something and then don't sell it.
MS probably usually does this to remove competition but I can't say why Google did it yet.
Of course I didn't RTA, so I still have my geek card.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
I have a feeling that Google is just a "spoiler". You might wonder why. Could some one remind me what Google has done with EtherPad or On2 Technologies? This is not to say they haven't done anything useful with other acquisitions but the two named above are too important to ignore.
Google, open-source the stuff acquired from On2 Technologies. How can that be bad?
Bloody hell, they're able to buy metaphors now.
Next thing you know their purchasing similes and puns and you wake up one day and realise you can't make your senior investigator in the crime novel you're writing a compulsive alcoholic, because Google acquired the characterization from Cliched Crime Detectives Holding Company two weeks ago...
No.. you aren't imagining things. It WAS on Slashdot for about 10 minutes on Monday, specifically talking about the fact that immediately after Google bought them, the software was no longer available for sale and you could only download the free version until... well.. today.
Then it suddenly disappeared, only to reappear just before the BumpTop download cutoff.
The
BumpDroid... but I had a TOTALLY different vision for that name...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
at first i was interested in google's random purchases, but they've been doing this for years and they haven't really done anything new. their still just a search engine company.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I am always interested in any attempt to move away from the classic desktop UI design, as I'm not convinced it is the best interface paradigm. I tried to use BumpTop for a while though, and I just couldn't see the appeal. It was certainly a novel idea, but I thought it was about as useful as Microsoft Bob. I'll just stick with Rainmeter on Windows for now (not that Rainmeter is the easiest thing to use). I bet that this is a patent thing for Google, as I can't see them really designing Chrome OS or Android with this interface.
I have no idea what Google plans for this software, so I might be surprised. With that said, though, it seems to me that this is the sort of software demo that impresses people who are already expert users of the current desktop metaphor. While that might include all of us who would read a site such as Slashdot, the VAST majority of people don't fall into that category. In my experience, most of them are already confused by the current file systems we use -- and software such as this simply takes the same metaphor and makes it more complicated. I think that what Apple is doing with the iPad (and iPhone) makes more sense. They're hiding the file system, which upsets and terrifies many geeks. Since we've been using this particular abstraction (and the ones that came with DOS-based systems before this), it's natural for us to think in terms of files. For most normal people, I suspect the approach that Apple is taking is more natural. Regardless of whether Apple has the right approach or not, though, I think the next-generation systems require a rethinking of the paradigm that we're comfortable with. It's time to make more of the OS transparent to the user in SOME way. Doing what BumpTop does merely adds bells and whistles (and a cool demo factor) to what already exists, IMO. I don't believe it will ever lead to anything that will be popular with people outside of geek circles.
That demo makes using a computer look like a lot of work. I don't want a pile of files I need to sort through one at a time. I hope they get something valuable from the patents, but don't take too many design cues.
Wasn't Sun supposed to revolutionize the world with a similar 3D desktop back in 2004?
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/Desktop/lookingglass/
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Google Desktop 2.0 anyone?
I never could understand how anyone would use a 3D desktop efficiently. The user can't really move through the space. The mouse or whatever you would use currently does not have a depth function. I don't like wading through files in 2D, let alone 3D. I've done a lot of reading and none of it seems to be in 3D. As it turns out, that's what matters. The way in which I learn and do work is an abstracted 2D technology (fonts, silly). Until the alphabet takes the next step to 3D, I doubt you'll see really efficient 3D desktops. I'm not saying it won't happen, I saying I have no clue how it would work.
I'd really like to use a big 3' by 4' 2D desktop with handwriting recondition software. I would be awesome to annotate class notes, do scratch work wherever, and not lose character sheets. Yeah, you'd be sitting at a table, but don't worry. There's a tablet that you can drag your work off of or on to it.
A little OT, I've seen print in the fourth dimension i.e. scrolling signs, but never really in the third. Who gives a shit if letters have depth?
Error. Direct object for verb "position" missing. Bailing out near line 1...
And I don't know if there's a rule against having two hyperlinks abutting like that, but there should be.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This looks awful the demo desktop looked cluttered and I can't see it making life easier or more productive. If anything I think it looks worse than what we have at the moment. I'm not against change in desktops and I realise that sometimes it just takes time to get used to but there seems to be a trend recently for making 3D desktops that just look flashy and not adding anything to the usefulness of the tool (in some cases detracting from it). This is not the first time I have thought this about new desktops (I don't find having a spinning cube/cylinder/hexagonal prism any more useful than having multiple v-desktops). Having all these "piles" on my desktop just seems like a way of loosing things quickly and ending up with muddled files with no structure.
The multi touch looks good though and I think this might be what google is buying. It could just be a way to have gestures for the ChromeOS/Android UI without apple saying that they own them. I just hope they don't take the "piles" as directorys/folders, symlinks/shortcuts and indexing produce a much better system.
Most Damage is done by people who are AWAKE
/. is getting slow with it's stories. Welcome to early this past week for this story!
woot woot woot
go on, take the money and run.
fsck everything else.
me. --a by-product of public education