'Cut and Paste' Is Out, 'Pick and Drop' Is In

Roland Piquepaille writes "How do you exchange a file with a colleague or a photograph with a family member? Chances are that you cut the desired element and paste it into your e-mail program to send it. Now, imagine yourself in a meeting, picking a file on your PDA with a digital pen and using the same pen to drop it on your friend's laptop screen. This is exactly what Jun Rekimoto and his team at Sony Interaction Laboratory have developed with their 'pick and drop' technique. BBC News looks at this project in Digital pen takes on mouse. Because it's based on cheap and existing components, such a system might be released in the near future, though Sony hasn't announced any plans to do it. You'll find more details and pictures in this overview."

Social Gaming?

This is a great step towards a more social use of computers. Instead of being bogged down with components and using hardware to move files around, it looks as though presenters will be able to quickly move through lectures or presentations without having to mess around. This seems much more seamless to me, and natural. Imagine gaming with the pick and drop scenario. I'm an amateur game designer and this is opening a whole new field of dreams for me... like maybe a better way to interract with film, in theatres, or the advent of much better interactive social gaming.

I've had a need for this.

Back in '92 in a High School computer class after some serious concentrating on coding, I looked over to a friend's PC next to me, and instinctively tried to move my mouse cursor over to his PC to show him an error. At the time, I felt silly for doing that. In hindsight, my subconscious actions might have led to a similar innovation.
Now on a related note, I found that after hours of playing Castle Wolfenstein (back then), I had the urge to push on every brick wall I found to see if there was a hidden room behind it.

Re:Social Gaming?

How about this scenario:

Using my wearable server, I manually (eye/hand gestures etc) or mentally (remember that mind reading thing?) send a URL to my friend (think instant messaging). The URL could point to an object on my wearable server (or some other server).

Voila instant telepathy.

My friend receives the URL on his/her wearable server, (IM) and proceeds to download/view the object/content. Then my friend could also "click" on a URL that changes the music a jukebox plays. Similar for setting the airconditioning temperature and lighting of a room.

Each wearable server could run a browser like app that helps make this possible - view streaming media, easily click on stuff given limited manual input, (select items from predictable lists of lists of lists etc). It will also run a webserver and web application that makes objects accessible, and a server that streams input video/audio.

Think super wearable PDA. No need to retype data. Look at the left top corner, press a button or make a gesture(hand/eye/mind), look at the right bottom corner and press a button/make gesture. You then select a rectangular clip out of the video you can see. The rectangular clip could be stored raw and/or automatically processed - e.g. OCR. Then you can just send the object to your colleague or friends or object database at home.

Tom!!!

This sounds like what Tom Cruise was doing in Minority Report with those fancy computer gloves.

Re:Tom!!!

An utter failure of icon-oriented menu or index interfaces is that not only do people remember the image, but more importantly, they remember the shape, size and position of the image.

People can find a pencil on a desk just fine, but finding a pencil in a 16x16 icon grid array of books and papers all evenly spaced randomly is nearly impossible... despite being icon oriented.

Now oddly, it's easier to find the shape of the word "pencil" in a paragraph than it is to find an icon of a pencil in a grid of icons.

Faster still is "ctrl-f" "pencil"

And yet faster is to type "ls pencil" on the command line.

Just because a UI is intuative does not mean it is user friendly... infact, it's usually the opposite.

Re:Tom!!!

and it's even quicker to say
"pencil"

Now with these 3Ghz+ processors where the heck is the integrated, cheap, good voice control software?

Steven Vallarian

Re:Tom!!!

Voice control is only suitable for lonely people.

Right, we know. Did you forget which web site you were on?

Novelty?

To me it just seems like another one of those novelty items. On the other hand, if they can get it to be as robust and enough mem like thumb drives, they could really take off.

Re:Novelty?

From what I read, the memory is limitless, because the pen is just what is being manipulated.

All the work is done when you tell the "pen server" to acknowledge this click as something you want to pick up. (probably by a button on a stylus)

Then you the next time you tap the pen (or after you click the button on the stylus) it drops it in the next place.

So the pen actually would have any memory.

Why use the pen at all?

So why use the pen at all .... why not use biometrics ... maybe fingerprints .... grab (pinch) a file and move it to the other guys machine .... you would just have to make sure that your finger print is readable on each end.

Re:Novelty?

On the other hand, if they can get it to be as robust and enough mem like thumb drives, they could really take off.

No memory, it just passes a handle and you computer gets the stuff from a server.

I'm not sure what advantage it gives over just making the PDA, or whatever, do the job directly. The pen is just another thing to break/lose/have stolen.

Actually, what we should have is IR on the PDA and a tilt switch inside. Then you could pour the data from yours into your friend's. Bummer when you spill your address book on the floor though.

Re:Novelty?

It makes for new ways of communication, too.

You can poke people in the eye with it! That will get the point across:-).

Re:Novelty?

Another novelty? I had a PalmPilot and then a PocketPC, and the number of times I "beamed" my contact information could be counted on one hand.

Re:Will it work on linux?

Will some slashdroid ask if it plays Ogg Vorbis?

Re:Will it work on linux?

If history is a guide, there will be two incompatible types of pens: Sony pens, and the pens used by everyone else.

All Sony electronic products will only support Sony pens, and all non-Sony products will interoperate amongst themselves, but not with Sony devices.

This annoying situation will persist for at least a decade.

The question

The question is, how long before 'pick and drop' is patented and no one else can use it without paying exhorbant liscencing fees.

What's sad about the above statement is it's not meant as humor.

Re:The question

Then it won't matter, because no-one else will use the technology and it'll just quietly fade away.

"It'll just quietly fade away" ??

You mean just like CDs did ...? Or perhaps you mean like nurofen (tradename for ibuprofen, granted it's more widespread since the patent lapsed, but it didn't die). Maybe, you mean that it will fade away like ring-pulls ...

Just because something is protected by a patent doesn't mean that it can't be licensed reasonably. Rewarding good, genuinely innovative, ideas is OK in my book.

Of course, this is quite clever as it uses hardware as well as software and so can more easily be patented in places that restrict software patents (which is still true in Europe, whatever the press says).

pbhj

Hmm

A business card pre-encoded with the contact information for its owner would be cool. Hand someone your card, they touch it to their PDA and hand it back.

Other more permenant uses would also be cool, get train schedules (including changes due to repairs (Those in NYC know just how important that detail is) at the station with a quick touch.

Already exists

Most bluetooth or IrDA cellphones support swapping business cards using the same standard (vCard) as PDAs and other IrDA compatible devices use. I've used my cellphone at conferences to beam business cards to and from all sorts of handheld gadgets.

That's great and all, but..

I'm not going to give up on the usefulness of my Cue Cat just yet.

I wish!

How do you exchange a file with a colleague or a photograph with a family member? Chances are that you cut the desired element and paste it into your e-mail program to send it

I don't know about your friends but I've got some real winners who just keep forwarding until the original info is nested 40 layers deep. argh!

I've been using pick and drop forever...

I've just confined its use to nasal maintenance. Sometimes an added roll step is required between the pick and drop steps. It sounds like these guys have just taken this concept and run with it.

I can see it now...

This thing'll be used to drop porn on the board room's projector during a meeting, a'la Fight Club, or will be used to write nasty things about the presenter, who would probably be facing the audience rather than the screen...

Transmission Vector

I suppose that someone should play devil's advocate and point out that this will revitalize the old "dirty disk" transmission vector for virus's and other malware. Where it use to be, "Don't put that disk in your PC, its got a virus on it", now it'll be "Don't touch me with that thing, its dirty!".

Subsequent invention of a small, slip-on firewall is pending...

Umm... No

How do you exchange a file with a colleague or a photograph with a family member? Chances are that you cut the desired element and paste it into your e-mail program to send it.

No. That's what the "attach" button is for. I've always found cut & paste into an email to be quite dodgy.

Awww COMEON.....

What the hell is the difference? Seriously. Now instead of using programs already implemented and functioning, we'll have to carry around a little pen with some memory or bluetooth or some other technology built in? Thus slowing down bootup time, adding more drivers to deal with, and potentially more flaws? I love how the article says "this is very intuitive..." Shit guys, cut & paste is intuitive cuz we've been doing it the better part of 20 years, now you want to 'shift the paradigm' (TM).

Sony should have seriously sat back and said, "ya know, it isn't broken and it doesn't need to be made any better right now, we have better things to spend money on." But noooo, instead Joe Jackass VP said "Hyuk, I wanna touch my friends laptop and have my files automagically pop onto their computer."

And holy hacking batman, this is a whole new world of identity/property theft.

Why?

What does this do that I can't do with cut&paste?
When i need something on another computer, it's always a file anyway, which I can put on my LAN (Like 1GB+). This just seems like a waste of time when we already have a simple way of doing it.

What would be really cool...

Instead of using a device to exchange files, wouldn't it be cool if we could somehow connect computers together in such a way that you could transfer files without having to use this funky "pen" interface? Imagine hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of these machines, exchanging information using some kind of graphical interface, where you could use some kind of input device like a joystick to "grab" a file, and "drop" it across to another computer, seamlessly. You might say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...

That would be cool!

A solution looking for a problem

The typical ways of exchanging files, using e-mail, discs, or a shared file server, are impractical or clumsy in many cases.

No, typical interfaces used to exchange information are impractical or clumsy. Well designed interfaces are not. Back before my Palm died I used to use beam-it to exchange files with other palm owners using the IR link. While the user interface was far from optimal, it was far from being impractical or clumsy.

Setting up a "pen manager server" just so I can exchange files is impractical and clumsy.

Best quote in the BBM article:
Dr Russell Beale, of the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham in the UK, said it was "toys for the boys".

I'm oldschool

I still like "Xerox and throw". . .

Pick'n'drop on a USB memory device

I had a similar idea a while ago (which I guess I should have followed up on), but it wasn't to share files between people. Instead, it would be a go2mypc-like service, where a USB memory-style device is used to tap on the files one wants to be available in a second location. If they fit on the device, then they are transferred to it. The ones that don't get delivered when the USB dongle is connected to a target machine.

Given the Sony approach to a device that has a unique ID that can be tracked through some kind of communication, I don't know why they don't simply take the opportunity to stuff the "pen" with the data. The demo talks about handheld to handheld, so it's not likely to be huge amounts.

In either case, the device is an intermediary, that could be built into anything most people have with them at all times. Cellphone, for example.

More info on how it works

Check out the paper [sony.co.jp] he submitted at CHI. Also the BBC has a story about this at this address [bbc.co.uk].
In short, the pen doesn't actually store the file, but uses a third server to mark and notify which file should be copied to where...

This is not a storage device shaped like a pen

Several people posting seem to have the impression that this thing is like a USB thumb drive shaped like a pen. It is not a storage device, it is an interface metaphor. The actual data still has to move across a network. It is just a more fluid and intuitive (well fluid and intuitive is a matter of opinion) of telling the systems to transfer data. ie, instead of expilictly transfering the data from the PDA (via hotsync, ftp, nfs, whatever) the pen motion initiates an implicit transfer of data.

how it works

A number of posters seem to have missed the point on how it is implemented (not surprising because that is hard to find in the articles). The key concept seems to be some shared space such as a server. The BBC article says:

"The 'pick and drop' system was developed using the Mitsubishi Amity handheld pen computer and a Wacom PL300 pen-sensitive desktop screen.

Pens are given a unique ID, which is readable by the computer when the pen is close to its screen.

When a person taps on an icon with the pen, the computer contacts a 'pen manager' server, via a fixed or wireless connection, and the object is attached to the pen, although the pen itself has no storage capacity.

When the pen tip comes close to the screen of another device, a shadow of the attached object appears on its screen.

Tapping the pen tip instructs the 'pen manager' server to copy the file to that location."

Use Tokens to exchange any size files by e-mail

I use Tokens to exchange any size files with my family and friends. So, I can e-mail a Token that contains a reference to some videos and pictures (the size of which easily exceeds the size of an e-mail attachment). The receiver can redeem the Token. No more fiddling with sending CDs through the mail with the latest pictures and videos of the kids. For more information or to try it out:
http://www.creo.com/tokens

Again, nothing new

If I recall correctly, Timbuktu allowed me to do this in the 1990's