News: Transparent Desktop Uses Mac OS X Technology

Wired magazine reports that researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have designed a system called Facetop that combines video-conference feeds with a transparent image of a computer desktop into one full-screen window. Facetop, which is based on the Mac OS X Quartz 2D and 3D graphics rendering technology, lets two users simultaneously work on the same document, and tracks the position of users' fingers so that they can use pointing gestures to manipulate objects on the desktop without using a mouse. In terms of hardware, the article says Facetop works on two Ethernet-connected Powerbooks with Firewire cameras, and should work "just fine" over the Internet. The technology was originally developed for "pair programming" (aka "extreme programming") which is "collaborative coding that pairs programmers in teams of two: one to program, the other to suggest and correct," the article says.