[For those of you who don't know, DemoCamp is an informal gathering of people who have interesting technology or products to showcase and which have not yet reached the mainstream. Of course some of them never will, but part of the fun is getting to see things that are still "raw" before they either make it or sink into oblivion.

Kudos go to Austin Hill for helping organize this event and for the significant increase in the quality of the presentations this event (not to mention for throwing a cool party, which he's always excelled at).]

By far the most impressive presentation of the night was BumpTop from UofT Master’s student Anand Agarawala. BumpTop is a user interface which renders your PC’s workspace as 3-D desktop where you can push, throw, flip, pile and even crumple documents, just as you would in the physical world. Here’s a demo.

Different people have different ways of organizing their workspace. Some people a virtually naked desk with everything neatly labelled and stored away in alphabetically sorted folders. I, on the other hand, have a somewhat more cluttered desk and work area (at times refered to by epithets such as messy or disorganized). There’s no right or wrong organizational system, just different ones for different people. 

A BumpTop desktop would let me organize my computer the way I think and work, rather than the other way around. Judging from the reaction from the audience – which burst into spontaneous applause at several points in the presentation – I’m not alone.

Tags: DemoCampMontreal2, Anand Agarawalla, BumpTop, HCI, Austin Hill