BumpTop (recently acquired by Google) created a 3D desktop application that lets you organize your e-documents and files. Visually, it looks like a typical office desk with piles of paper, and technically gives you the ability to mimic real life actions like shoving papers to the side of your desk.  You can “scrunch” them to create a neat pile that you can flip through as if you were flipping the pages of a magazine or a book. “Double tapping” allows you to organize them in a more structured, linear way. All of this is done without the use of a mouse.  You just need your fingers.

Photo Credit: CNET News

It’s quite robust in many other ways and claims to help the user be more efficient. One cool feature is that when you plug in your USB thumb drive, it shows up on your desktop.  Simply drag and drop files that you want to copy to the USB drive. You can also open all the files on the USB drive as a pile.  Want to update you Facebook profile photo?  That’s easy, too. Just select the photo and drag it to the FB icon on your desktop.  Use a similar process when you want to attach files to e-mail.

On the surface, it sounds amazing! …and looks really cool, too.  But, I wonder how much of a memory suck this overlay might be for your PC…and since it looks and feels like your real life desk, will it also take on the cluttered look when you don’t keep up with it?

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to have a go at it because it’s no longer available since becoming member of the Google family. Maybe Google will re-launch it at some point in the future or turn it into something more useful. You can still take a look at some of the functions, though, by checking out the YouTube video below.

If you’ve used it, leave a comment.  I’d love to hear what you think.

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