Project Looking Glass by Sun Microsystems: Sun Microsystems is contributing Project Looking Glass… to the open source community Wow. I had a debate about this desktop environment a few months ago with a hard-core windows programmer. He kept coming back to the, “well it’s not windows” argument implying that it can’t be that good or it would say “Microsoft” on it. I could tell though that he was suffering a lot of anxiety and turmoil as he watched the video presentation.

He stated, well, it’s not really a product and anyway, what will people need 3d for? I replied that Windows originally was nothing more than a way to switch between DOS programs. However, once people started considering the possibilities of what they had at their disposal with the windowing desktop all sorts of unexpected and creative applications emerged.

The applications demonstrated in the presentation are pretty remarkable. I gasped along with the live audience when the browser window simply flipped over to allow taking of notes. I can’t wait to see what happens when this type of functionality becomes mainstream. People will be doing things that we can’t even comprehend right now because our brains are still locked into a 2 dimensional box. I think I’m going to download it today and try it out.