Sun Spectacle
Hideya Kawahara and his ukelele
Living billboard
Living billboard
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Hoping to boldly go where no desktop has gone before, Sun Microsystems has gone to...the third dimension.
In a revolutionary digital demonstration, dubbed the "Java Living Billboard," Sun brought the largest-ever technology spectacle to San Francisco. In front of an
anxious crowd of avid open-source developers and spectators, Sun unveiled its Project Looking Glass, a desktop
interface that brings desktop applications to life in 3D.
The first-ever outdoor public display projected onto a building situated at the northwest corner of Fourth and Howard Streets. The crowd saw a folder entitled "music"
transforming into a picture-perfect image of a CD, complete with song list; a dozen Web pages line up vertically, creating a bookshelf effect; and a window is flipped up-side-down
for note taking Ð all in a single application.
Standing at the side of Sun VP Curtis Sasaki, creator Hideya Kawahara revealed to the enthusiastic crowd, "Project Looking Glass will change the way we use our
desktops. We want to make it more efficient, more aesthetically pleasing, more powerful. The desktops we use today have not changed
significantly for fifteen years and it's time for a little update."
Asked what propelled Kawahara to develop a 3D user interface, he responded, "Serendipity."
After damaging his laptop in 2002, and splurging on a new Toshiba laptop with a 16-inch screen, he loaded the Linux operating system onto it. Much of his free time
was spent creating the 3-D software that is now Project Looking Glass and what some call an enhanced user experience.
In what seemed to be an effort to enhance the viewing experience of the crowd, Kawahara also entertained onlookers with an impromptu ukulele performance,
strumming renditions of The Beatles and Japanese folk songs. Like creating the 3D desktop, Kawahara's ukulele hobby seems to be about
enhancing life.
On June 28, the first day of Sun's JavaOne Developer Conference, Sun announced that Project Looking Glass will be available to the open source community to promote
innovation, increase adoption and grow the Java ecosystem. Also this week, Scott McNealy and Kawahara announced during the keynote that the technology will be available under the General Public
License.
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