BumpTop
| Original author(s) | Anand Agarawala |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Bump Technologies Inc. |
| Initial release | April 8, 2009 |
| Stable release | 1.51 (Build Revision 5019), OS X 1.04.2
/ December 7, 2009 |
| Repository | |
| Operating system | Windows XP/Vista/7/OS X[1] |
| Size | 14.6 MB[1] |
| Type | desktop environment |
| License | proprietary |
| Website | http://www.bumptop.com |
BumpTop is a desktop environment, designed to enhance traditional computer desktop functionality by more closely supporting the normal behavior of a real-world desk. It is aimed at stylus interaction, making it more suitable for tablet PCs and palmtops. It was created at the University of Toronto as Anand Agarawala's Masters Thesis. Anand Agarawala also gave a presentation at the TED conference about his idea. The 1.0 version was released on April 8, 2009, along with a fully featured pro version that is a paid upgrade.[2]
In BumpTop, documents are described by three-dimensional boxes lying on a virtual desk. The user can position the boxes on the desk using the stylus or mouse. Extensive use of physics effects like bumping and tossing is applied to documents when they interact, for a more realistic experience. Boxes can be stacked with well-defined gestures. Multiple selection is performed by means of a LassoMenu, which fluidly combines into a single stroke the act of lasso selection and action invocation via pie menus. BumpTop currently supports Windows XP/Vista/7, and a version for Mac OS X/Linux was released into private beta on Jan. 18th, 2010. The Mac edition eschews the pie menu in favor of a more normal selection menu [3]
The software installer as well as the application itself phone home. While the download page on the official website does state: "Internet connection required for activation",[4] this may not appear in other sources such as Cnet. There is no explicit dialog box asking the user to confirm this connection at the time it is required. BumpTop automatically updates to the latest version, and version number can be accessed through the settings, or by pressing F1.
References
- ^ a b http://download.cnet.com/BumpTop/3000-2072_4-10912219.html
- ^ Lardinois, Frederic (2009-04-07). "Bumptop Launches: Make Your Physical Desktop Virtual". ReadWriteWeb. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
- ^ http://getsatisfaction.com/bumptop/topics/osx_linux_support
- ^ http://bumptop.com/download.php
- Agarawala, Anand. Ravin Balakrishnan. Keepin' it Real: Pushing the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen. Proceedings of CHI 2006 - the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. pp. 1283-1292.
External links
- Official website
- Video of TED Presentation on BumpTop
- BumpTop reviewed at Thunderror.com
- BumpTop reviewed at ZDNet (January 20, 2009)
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