BumpTop is a new way of manipulating your GUI desktop with a graphics pen. Documents can be moved and piled (among other actions) as if they were real pieces of paper on a physical desktop. Simulated real physical interactions, such as documents pushing others out of the way as you move them around, are intended to increase the intuitiveness of the layout tool.

Given the messiness of my desks at work and home, I’m not so sure this will work for me, but it’s an interesting idea.

There’s a neat video demo linked from the site (and a ummm… GAY “hip-hop overview”) if you want to see BumpTop in action; unfortunately for Linux users, BumpTop seems to be Windows-only.

As I’ve seen it described on another blog, “not just another “me-too” alternative UI; a lot of effort and polish has been put into the (pen-based) interaction, resulting in a very natural way of interacting with collections of information. Less sci-fi than Minority Report, but far more likely to hit a desktop near you in the next few years.”

Also a visually similar project called lowfat, with an equally impressive video demo, is being developed — with enough sponsorship, the guys working on lowfat say it will go open source.