Potato I have

Something interesting from Sun: their looking glass 3D desktop project. There are some screenshots and a demo video.

This is a major break in desktop presentation, but will it be more than a toy? If I have 30 windows open (as I often do) will I be better off with them on edge than I am with my virtual desktop manager? I was reminded of the greek memorization technique where you physically place stuff in a personal, well-developed mental space like a house that you can move through. What if your 2D desktop were a similar 3D space personalized in whatever way you wanted (or a collection of these 3D profiles)? While the icons and windows were 3D, the desktop itself was conspicuously not, aside from some ability to “panorame” around a bit; why not a more 3D-navigable desktop?

It seems to be potentially a big deal, which brings me to another reaction I had to the demo (obvious, and the Sun presenter bludgeoned us with it of course): wouldn’t we see a lot more innovation with something like this from the open communities, rather than from a single very large company (albeit with enormous resources)? This is all built on java and linux (well, solaris too if you want). Not yet open source, but from the project FAQ:

Sun believes that tapping into the creative and open community of people working on Java will drive innovation. We are evaluating the role of open source development for this project.

Postscript: Sun will be GPL’ing looking glass today. Let’s see where it goes.