Some tough competition
It looks like I’m up against some really tough competition (manpower- and/or cash-wise) with lowfat. There’s the multi-touch interaction research project by people of New York University’s Media Research Lab. That project already made some news a few months ago. Of more recent date is the project called BumpTop by people from the University of Toronto. While both of these projects target slightly different (from lowfat) goals and do not seem to strive for platform-independence, I still regard them as my “closest competition”. I love the multi-pointer interaction of the first one and like the approach of mouse-gestures in the second one.
Sort of related to my interests and plans for lowfat I found out about MPX (a multi-pointer X11 Server). That’s something I would like to be able to investigate at some point. Preferably on a tablet-PC with a spiffy OpenGL-chip and a well-accommodated Linux. Could this be a start of a multi-pointer extension for X11? I would definitely welcome such an outcome!
Damn, where are the lowfat-interested and filthyly rich VC-investors when you need them? Ah yeah right, I live in the wrong country for this… Germany here? *sigh*
June 21st, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Holy…wow
That lowfat video was very slick. Thanks for sharing your work so far!
June 22nd, 2006 at 12:01 am
Mirco,
I really do hope your project will find VC funding or perhaps Novell/Suse can make you an offer to integrate lowfat with Compiz/XGL. Absolutely amazing you did all that by yourself. I can only imagine how useful this will be with f-spot, banshee (browse by album cover), to sort slides with a presentation program, etc.
Mindblowing!
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:28 am
Holy merciful crap.
I had no idea anyone else was interested in multiple pointer X. I’ve been fanatically interested in multiple pointers for a number of years, but have been working on building myself a better coding environment & coding framework first. That has consumed much of my life.
The fact that there is an MPX project is astounding. My focus had mainly been on building a window manager to grab X input devices and to display what look like cursors based off each input stream. I truly hope MPX gets mainline intergrtion at some point.
As a side note, if you look at these other projects, _none_ of them are VC funded. Its all big Uni projects. I’m convinced technology is in the "build a better horse" stage, when really someone needs to come along and invent a horseless buggy, to run off the Henry Ford expression.
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:56 am
Hi MacSlow,
when you say "spiffy OpenGL-chip", how spiffy do you mean? I run AIGLX/compiz on my X41 tablet (intel i915) and it runs smooth. Anyway, I’m drooling! With this plus User:Herzi’s Gnome Handwriting Recognition engine in the works, this would be a good excuse to dump Windows altogether. Great work!
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:23 am
@Belathor: That sounds nice indeed! Well, everything I ask from the OpenGL-hardware is dedicated texture-ram (the more the better… as always). That intel915 is a chip sharing its memory with the system-ram, isn’t it? While I never got my hands on such a system, I expect the results to be not that good. But I would like to be proven wrong on this.
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:32 am
I run Compiz/AIGLX on a i915 and it runs flawlessly. Im some ways just as good as my desktop which is a nvidia5200.
June 29th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
If you have not done so - Try posting your video on google and youtube and you might just get the type of exposure bunptop just got overnight!
You have a brilliant "product"… keep going!
October 10th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Hi! lowfat looks just great, a project like this would definitly mark the diference between linux and mac/window$. how\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’s the project doing? havent read any news about lowfat in a long time (not pressuring :P).
October 12th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Hi! I have been hoping for a spatial/visual UI like lowfat’s for years. The WIMP UI paradigm has always been clumsy at best and yet all operating systems stuck to it. Its great to see that some apps start to take a different approach. I would like to use lowfat especially for searching and reading scientfic papers (i.e. PS/PDF documents).
As far a German VC-investors go, try HassoPlattner Ventures http://www.hp-ventures.com/ . I once heard a talk by one of their managers and I think they might take an interest in your project. Seriously. I do hope, though, that lowfat will be published under an open source license though