There’s an article in the MIT Technology Review about the end of the desktop. The article talks about the history of the desktop (it’s 30 years old!), it current limitations, and highlights a few current initiatives to start moving beyond the desktop. It’s pretty interesting – they have some screen shots about some of the new ideas. One of them is a 3D interface that appears to have grown out of Microsoft Bob – it’s metaphor is a house with unlimited rooms. Users ‘hang’ their files around the house. Interestingly, in test studies, users didn’t ever hang their files on the floors or cielings – in essence cutting their space by 1/3. Also amusing is the complaint by an engineer that idea of having a metaphor as a navigational/organisational tool is outdated – he doesn’t metaphor at all. Which is just so engineery of him to say.