Ashish Patel

If you have heard of Sun’s “Project Looking Glass” please give yourself a pat on the back!

Project Looking Glass is based on an open platform that experiments with 3D user interfaces. I’ve been quietly learning about this project in my spare time, and now that they have public demos I thought I’d express how cool I think it is. The project runs on Sun’s Java Desktop Operating System and allows 3D user interfaces to be controlled and handled in pure 3D. For example, if you are watching a video in the media player, you can take the window and “dock ” it along the side of the desktop. You can also turn windows “inside-out” so that they have a mirror effect. There are a tonne of other features too, I don’t have all day to write them out

The most impressive feature is the desktop wallpaper. When the desktop loads and when you move your cursor from one end of the desktop to the other, the desktop behaves as if you are actually walking around - that is it shows you the desktop wallpaper from slightly different perspectives. You really have to try out the demo to see what I’m talking about (REQ: J2SE 5.0 and Java Web Start).

Why do I think this is so cool? Well it really comes down to the “feel” in “look and feel”. I don’t see other operating system developers taking a similar approach to Sun’s approach. Check out the project here.

Wanna win an XBOX 360? For those of you at the University of Alberta, my sister’s denistry class is having a silent auction for their graduation. They got a smack load of really good things you can bid on, such as iPods, Gift Certificates, and even a date with a guy in their class! They are going to raffle off an XBOX 360 at the auction, which will be held at Boston Pizza on Whyte (in Edmonton).

My sister organized the event, which has a grande finale on November 18th. She asked me long ago to donate something, but I’m just a poor boy. So I decided to donate a website so they can do all their bidding online. If you want to bid you need a username and password, so if you want to participate e-mail me at patel.ashish@gmail.com.

The cool thing about the site is that it yet again uses the FinalFabric Framework that I’ve been using for a lot of sites. It only took me a weekend to setup and site (this includes settin gup the site, writing the code to do auctioning, and the management tools for my sister to control her content).