Associating application states with a physical object

A method for using a physical object to retrieve a state of an application running on a computer system that is coupled to an interactive display surface, the method comprising the steps of:

• (a) reading a characteristic presented by the physical object upon detecting the physical object is disposed adjacent to the interactive display surface and by at least determining a position of the physical object relative to the interactive display surface with the use of infrared light, said characteristic and thus, said physical object being associated with attributes representative of a state of the application, said attributes having previously been stored by the computer system;
• (b) receiving an indication to retrieve the state of the application that was previously stored;
• (c) retrieving the attributes representative of the state associated with the characteristic and with the physical object from a storage device not contained in the physical object;
• and
• (d) processing the attributes to recreate the state of the application.

A method for associating a state of a computer application with a physical object on an interactive display surface of a computer system, the method comprising the steps of:

• identifying the physical object based upon a characteristic of the physical object that is detectable when the physical object is disposed adjacent to the interactive display surface;
• receiving an indication to save the state of the computer application;
• storing attributes representative of the state in data storage not contained in the physical object;
• associating the attributes representative of the state with the characteristic of the physical object, and thus, with the physical object;
• reading a second characteristic associated with a second physical object when the second physical object is disposed adjacent to the interactive display surface;
• and
• associating the attributes representative of the state with both the characteristic associated with the physical object and the second characteristic associated with the second physical object, and thus with both physical objects.