A few hundred thousand lines of computer code could revolutionise the way people interact with computers, say its unlikely inventor and his backers. Denny Jaeger, a musician and composer who spent the past decade developing the software, will unveil it January 15, when people will be able to download a scaled-down version for free. The public can then decide whether Jaeger is a trailblazing whiz – or a grandiose flop.
NBOR Probes Blackspace With Innovation
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I’m sure this will be awesome, never been let down by excessive hype before.
So, another do-it-all cd-burning text processing music ripping internet messenger? Oh… A revolution. RUNME.EXE
It is really entertaining seeing all the Linux fanboys over here shooting NBOR down (without having tried their product yet) however shout “innovative” for segusoLand two stories above this one. Hah!
Ummm… that comment would hold a lot more water if it was the same folks who raved one and pooh-pooh’ed the other. Don’t look like it though…
I´ve been waiting for the past 5 or 6 year for someone to come up with something that does the same stuff that is possible with Squeak, but is nicely integrated with my OS and does not require me to think in Smalltalk.
Maybe NBOR is the thing.
PS: I have nothing against Smalltalk, it´s just that its syntax is a bit weird for guys that use C-like languages everyday for a living…
🙂
I would never start to bash a program, not even now. I went to read the site, but really. Feature after feature is explained very fuzzy, not a video or screenshot to find. Yet I’m curious.
Second, if there website was developed with it, then they have a problem. (No, it renders fine in konqueror) Words are underlined, but do not lead to a other site.
Links (I’m speaking of the left pannel) only work on the very first word.
And about segusoLand, well, I read the documentation of it a while ago, and I was impressed. Could myself imagine using/supporting it.
How can you take anyone who uses Comic Sans MS seriously?
Looks like a gesture driven authoring tool.
I wonder what features will be provided to
learn the gestures.
… wouldn’t there be some screenshots or anything? Even the website for NBOR has no screenshots of this app.
Luke: right on the money.
Nothing says “I am a fool. Come read my Star Wars fanfic on Geocities!” like Comic Sans.
It is really entertaining seeing all the Linux fanboys over here shooting NBOR down (without having tried their product yet) however shout “innovative” for segusoLand two stories above this one. Hah!
1. The people who bash it are not seguso likers.
2. There were way too many companies that would claim to change the way you interact with computer. It is completely normal that someone who promises to change everything is not always taken seriously. We learned about that from seeing all those vaporware pump and dump operations, and yet another claim of computing revolution is going to be mocked if there are no cold hard facts or screenshots to support it.
3. They spend years on the project and can’t afford a decent site? Smells fishy.
Blackspace is an environment that you never have to leave.
[…]
NBOR’s Universal Tools replace computer programs, and that represents huge freedom of use for you in Blackspace. You never have to leave Blackspace to operate all that can be done with NBOR software. Everything works inside this one familiar environment.
“Blackspace” as they describe it reminds me much of Jef Raskin’s The Humane Environment. Independent, unrelated or an inspiration?
http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/
I believe I have read about something like this before but it wasnt just available at the time. It was only a talk. I can’t clearly remember but I believe it was this very site, osnews. It was about not needing a different program for a different task so the operating system itself does the job. So there is no need for a particular word processing program, image editing etc. All these functions are integrated into the OS and the OS itself does the required task instead of relying on an external program. I believe it was this site and it was an article but I can’t remember.
The website sure looks and sounds like the a daily vigra/penisenlargment/getdebtfree-spam, I hope it’s more serious than that.
Anyway, the idea is really old and known but I have not yet seen a system that fully adapts it, it will be interesting to try out. The fact that he spent several years to write loads of code doesn’t really say anything about the quality of this thing, so I guess we’ll just have to see about that. I’m sceptical but curious.
Segway for the PC, anyone?
You saw it here on OSNews first… the first screenshot of NBOR
http://www.nbor.com/images/splash.jpg
8mb’s of code!, I hope it’s handcoded asm then!
Any rocket scientist here? maybe you could advise us exactly what we would be paying for because i’ve read the site and without wanting to sound completely stupid I still don’t quite get it!
Canvases can be saved as common document titles – such as schoolreport.doc – or as a symbol, such as a star, logo, photo or dot. Instead of sending all the data over the internet, the creator can send the symbol alone.
If the recipient has NBOR, he need only click on the symbol and the complete file will rebuild itself in the recipient’s Blackspace, thanks to 500,000 lines of complicated code that Jaeger and eight developers spent two years writing.
And how praytell does it send the information over the internet again? Rebuild itself?
Though this does just sound like a cross between oberon, mouse gestures and hypercard.
http://www.nbor.com/images/blackspace%20final.jpg
Exciting!!
lol, I read that thing MS bob the entire way through. Based on the low budget and poorly designed website I am willing to drop money on this thing being a flop. All hype, no details.
“NBOR Player will be released this evening (1/15/04)”
Uhm, that was _yesterday_!
NBOR’s main software, called Dyoun™, will retail for $299
If I want to spend $300 on hype I can get a better deal on a Lindows PC.
Where is the unsubscribe link on that webpage
OMG, how did I miss that reading through the posts, lol
http://www.nbor.com/images/splash.jpg
“your stuff appears instantly through simple drawing and the typing of text”
60 patents and 1500 claims filed because they thought of using MS Paint as a desktop replacement?
If I never read about n00ber^ again it will be too soon.
As of now (12:15 am pst, 1/16/04) they have made their player available – win2k and xp only. I guess i won’t be installing it….
Maybe I’m missing something but I’m still stumpted on
what this is all amount (yes, I read the limited
docs that were provided).
I just tried it. I might write an article about it. It is nothing that will change the world. It is interesting, but not complete by any means.
From a quick look at the player my first impression was a very complicated interface, and yer very much like hyercard, which had a much nicer interface, and was free with all macs.
I feel that the clain that this is simple enough for anybody to use is stretching the point a bit. I know plenty of novice windows users who would be complely stuck when faced with this, it will need a very, very good manual.
I don’t hink they’ll be selling tomany copies just yet! Especially at that price!
To see the greatness of their interface, a prospective customer has to download a 15 megabyte executable and run it. Hey folks, there are nice formats called gif and png, and you can use flash for animations. It isn’t that hard, get a clue.
On a related note, have a look at NBOR speak ( http://nbor.com/nbor_speak.htm ). Did the ten year old who made the site invent their “newspeak”, too? And I thought that open source projects have the worst names ;-P.
The problem with one man geniuses from outside the regular CS industry is precisely that. They will have to reinvent everything they need that they never saw in a hundred other environments that are much better thought out (and probably not yet patented). I didn’t find any substantial bios on any of the geniuses behind this except Denny and his $$$ backers. The HP guy Doyle appears to have pretty good creds (HP,ADI,Xilinx) that doesn’t fit in here!
Really good products get implimented quickly, tested, thrown away and rebuilt many times until they home in to a good solution. Waiting 8yrs to get any code written means its been through 1 loop.
The issue of patents really turns me off. I can’t think of a single app on any platform that has patents in it except possibly media codecs and engineering SW, usually to be avoided at all costs.
Also if it needs 256MB to be OK, well that rules out most PCs in the world for the forseable future, as well as the 2K/XP requirement. For that much memory you should be able to get 1 hell of an app, or 1 hell of a memory leaker.
Also I can’t take seriously any SW that is tested on kids that is meant for general adult ($) population. The terminology strikes me as coming from a child or someone that feels compelled to change the world on demand. Too much kinder or scifi TV or something.
If this product ever gets to CompuUSA, I expect it to quickly end up on the $5 shelf. The propmo offer also smacks of money grabbing.
Inspite of that I will give it a try when I get back to admin level, but I think I will stick with Gobe for now.
Anyone remember “The Last One” from around 25yrs ago.
it seems like its TOO complicated. i played with it for a while and i think its starting to give me a headache. whats wrong with regular icons.. and different programs for different purposes?? its wierd.. i dont know how else to explain it. its like a word processor. yet its not.. its something new. i find it interesting. but would find it more interesting on a MASSIVE SCALE.
in a way… i find it interesting, but also mindbogglingly silly.
right now we have COMPLICATED programs and SIMPLE GUI’s. The GUI is simple enuf to where people can use the programs they know about, they might not be able to use Every program, but at least they could close and save, and do basic things…
why would anyone want a complicated GUI that attempts to do everything? by being extremely vague -about how to get results. this program still demands that you know what to draw, and where to draw it. i couldn’t imagine trying to get my dad to learn something in this.
it could actually be good if people started learning how to use this in kindergarten.
This thing is awesome, it will be bigger than sliced TV.
Bigger even than EBN OZN!
Don’t say I dinna tole you.
DOA!!!
Excellent. Well, farewell, NBOR. We hardly knew ye.
PS: In response to one earlier poster, yes, I remember The Last One in the early 80s. A database app from the UK that they claimed to be the last program that would be ever written since anything that people would ever need afterwards could be built with it. :::chuckle:::