You know what would be cool?

It would be cool if there was some direct, intuitive way to share links with nearby laptop users. This need crops up all the time. Here’s a lil user narrative for all my UI homies out there in internet land, yo.

I’m at work, and someone mentions that Amy Winehouse is looking terrible lately, and I Google up a cellie vid of the shantoozie cooking up some rock (what a pity, tut tut) and agree yeah, man she looks terrible but then my friend mocks her shoes or whatever and I’m all there’s no shoes in this pic what are you lookin at and he’s all like there are too it’s over here on this site not that one fool and he IMs it to me or emails it or shouts the URL across the room including the gory dot com slash zero eight four three underscore alphanumeric stone age gibberish so incomprehensibly tolerated in this the twenty-first century of our lord.

Pity, really.

So here’s what I would like: the sending user highlights the URL in the address bar of the browser (or any other defined object in the OS, really, such as a file or whatnart). Then the sending user swipes their mouse in my general direction and releases the file, as if they were throwing it at me!

Up pops a message, center screen, alerting me that a nearby user has attempted to send me something (like an IM alert, probably, but with the option to make it force-forgrounded). I can accept or ignore (or even turn off the alerts) and if I accept the object does what it’s supposed to – a URL opens a new browser window, a file opens in the native app, a viral payload executes and sends all my passwords to the great file cabinet in the sky before wiping the boot drive. Everybody wins!

Sending digital items in this fashion would be called ‘tossing off.’ Soon, everyone will be tossing off in the bright and shining future of digital-gesture computer interaction!