What is RoomYak?

RoomYak is two things. It is both a completely new way to look at your data and it is a radically new way to store your data in complete privacy on the Net. Let’s talk about the visual side of things here.

You zoom around a 3D environment of interconnecting rooms using the mouse and keyboard.

Visually, the key concept is as simple at this:

• A 3D room is the same as a ‘directory’ in a conventional file system.
• 2D objects (conventional file system things such as documents, images, sound files) sit on the walls
• 3D models (that might represent real objects) sit on the floor
• Users build private rooms and public rooms
• Users have total control over who might visit their public rooms
• Visitors can interact with the objects in the rooms

RoomYak  is our first implementation of this new type of interface to data. We have released it in the public domain because we want to tap into all of your ideas, energy and feedback to build something incredible.

Here’s what you can do right now:

• create an account (it’s free!) that allows you to operate on your rooms from any computer
• create any number of private or public rooms
• place your public rooms in a list for others to find (qualified by pass-phrases, if you wish)
• decorate those rooms with drag&drop operations of 2D files from your local file system
• double-click on these wall objects to edit them (every wall is like a Desktop)
• cut&paste 3D models from room to room – we have provided a few ‘warehouse’ rooms filled with models to get you started.
• visit the public rooms of others, look at their wall and floor objects and attach interactive comments to them
• copy objects from these public rooms to take back to your own rooms

This is the beginnings of a new participatory 3D environment in which your data persists in rooms of total privacy or rooms you decide to share with others.  It sounds like a game, but its much more. Its a different way to organize your digital things, and a new way to show them to your friends. We built this interface because we believe you will find it easier to remember the route you navigate through 3D space then a bunch of directory names in a File Explorer tree.

We are starting from blank slate…. We need you to tell us how to make this more interesting for you. We need coders to build some of these things and we need your inspiration as to where we can go with this.