I just saw the full presentation Jeff Han gave at TED 2007 on the Bi-manual, multi-point, and multi-user interactions on a graphical display surface. Since it was already on my mind, I could see how something like this mashes up nicely with the BumpTop developed by Anand Agarawala and Ravin Balakrishnan.

Most folks, as David Pouge mentions in his post, seem to agree the BumpTop isn’t going to replace more traditional desktops.

I’m guessing that replacing what we see in Mac OS X or Windows is not, ultimately, the point. It’s to start thinking, start playing, run some experiments, to exploit today’s high-powered graphics routines to bring some new life to the crusty old desktop metaphor. The results of this tomfoolery may not bring Apple or Microsoft to Anand’s doorstep, but maybe the Bumptop fun will at least rub off on those much bigger players.

Now, back to Han and his new interface. Despite the formation of his new company, Perceptive Pixel, we’re not likely to see it in action any time soon. In fact, according to a quote of his in a recent Fast Company article:

As computers have become more powerful, computer graphics have advanced to the point where it’s possible to create photo-realistic images. The bottleneck wasn’t, How do we make pixels prettier? It was, How do we engage with them more?

This seems to open the door for Agarawala and Balakrishnan. What I mean by that is you could imagine Han’s interface running something like the BumpTop for some specified interactions. Assuming the Perceptive Pixel manages the I/O while the BumpTop is the UI for handling (almost literally) image files and other media assets.

So, there ya’ go. Mash ‘em up.