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Knowledge Room
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Version
1.1
Knowledge Room uses 3-D technology to enable users to
navigate, gather, organize, and recall information.
Taking advantage of human perception and spatial
memory, Knowledge Room helps people organize
information in their computer in the same way they
organize in the real world: by manipulating objects in
3D space, with a sense of depth, color, texture, and
lighting. Knowledge Room places the user inside of a
large room with beamed ceilings, brick walls and an
upper loft. Environment views offer close-ups of
bookshelves in each area. The environment view engages
one's sense of perception, invoking a different
thought process: "Music files are in the cabinet near
the stereo"; "Newspapers are in the large green book
on the bottom shelf near the couch." Knowledge Room
users organize information into books. A book can
contain many things: web pages, notes, documents,
email messages, or references to pictures, music,
spreadsheets - anything launched from the traditional
Windows desktop. Gathering content into books is easy:
drag web pages from the browser and drop them into
books; drop email messages and files onto
books; "AutoClip" text into books from any Windows
program. Knowledge Room provides an alternative to the
decades-old desktop metaphor. The desktop is 2-
dimensional and non-intuitive, limiting us to folders
and files. Everyone is familiar with the problem of
hunting for information through cryptically labeled
files scattered across hundreds of confusing directory
and subdirectory names. Web browsers only exacerbate
the situation, giving us access to a world of
information, with only flat folder bookmarks to keep
track of it all. Knowledge Room changes all of that by
tapping into our natural ability to think spatially,
allowing us to keep information in real books, placed
in oak and mahogany bookcases throughout a richly
rendered environment. "Knowledge Room.... ...putting
information in its place."
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