SAN FRANCISCO – Has your mouse broken down and you need a quick fix? Or perhaps you like the look of Apple’s Magic Trackpad, but you don’t want to pay mega bucks? AfroTech forum user Dr. West devised a touchpad made of, well, a piece of paper shaded with pencil with an electrical current running through it.

Using an Arduino controller, Dr. West connected four voltage dividers to the corners of a square piece of paper. The paper was heavily coated with graphite from a pencil–using materials such as aluminium foil would be too conductive. An anti-static wrist strap grounds the user’s hand from the current, thus completing the circuit, and preventing the user from getting shocked (Zap!).

The graphite makes a good conductor, so the Arduino board can then pick up finger movement, and tell the computer to move the pointer onscreen. Check out the video above to see the touchpad in action.

SRP: P 6,000

Is there one gadget that works as a mouse, a slide presenter, a laser pointer and a media remote control?

Microsoft intros the Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000–an all-in-one super tool for the office, road and home.

Mouse
This super mouse features a 2.4 GHz Bluetooth® which provides an amazing wireless connection and a high definition laser technology giving a more precise, responsive and smoother tracking.

Slide Presenter
Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 is great for presentations! It maintains a very good connection even if you’re 30 feet away from your computer.

Laser Pointer
The laser pointer feature of this mouse proves to be very useful when using to present or giving lectures.

Remote Control
Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 is also useful for controlling digital entertainment with its media remote function.

All these functions in one amazing tool! Not to mention it has an ambidextrous design so you’ll feel comfortable using it with either hand.

By Roman Loyola
November 3, 2009

People have strong opinions about computer mice-after all, a mouse (along with a keyboard) physically forms a personal connection between you and your Mac. Apple‘s new Magic Mouse has a creative new design that, upon first impression, you’ll either love or hate.

The Bluetooth Magic Mouse has no visible buttons. It is a two-button mouse, but there’s no visible separation between right and left. I’m right handed, and I use my middle finger for right click, and my index finger for left click, and in my five hours of use, I never accidentally clicked the wrong button.

The buttons actually click; when you press down, you can see and feel the button depress, and there’s an audible click that sounds authentic. You don’t have to take your finger off the mouse to double click. When I simply rested my hand on the mouse, however, I clicked it.

The Magic Mouse has only two buttons. There are no side buttons, like on the Mighty Mouse (now called the Apple Mouse), nor is there a scroll wheel or scroll ball button. In fact, the Exposé or Dashboard functions found in the Apple/Mighty Mouse are no longer in the Magic Mouse.

Perhaps the most innovative feature about the Magic Mouse is the Multi-Touch support, which effectively replaces a scroll wheel or scroll ball. To scroll a document up, down, left or right, you glide your finger on the mouse in the appropriate direction. Your fingers don’t even have to be at the top of the mouse; you can swipe the area just above the logo if you want, and the scrolling works.

The two-finger swiping, however, wasn’t so easy for me to perform. Two-finger swiping can be used in iPhoto, for example, to move between photos. I found it difficult to keep the Magic Mouse still as I swiped two fingers left or right.

The Magic Mouse has a plastic top, and aluminum bottom with two plastic rails. Moving the mouse on my desktop with and without a mouse pad wasn’t smooth at all-it was a grating sensation.

Below is a ten-second video of the Magic Mouse System Preference, which has built-in video tutorials on how to use Multi-Touch.

Following the Magic Mouse’s launch, Apple has also released software updates for Leopard and Snow Leopard to support its Multi-Touch features.

Priced at P550, the Micro Traveler is a mini optical notebook mouse from Genius. It offers  precision, mobility and convenience in miniature proportions. Measuring only 74mm, Micro Traveler is very light and is easy to carry with its retractable cable design. 

Featuring an advanced 1200 dpi optical sensor, Micro Traveler has incredible smooth tracking performance for cursor movement.  This allows you to browse documents or Internet pages more efficiently in less time. It has three buttons with scroll wheel. Micro Traveler supports Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Mac OS X or later versions. 

Micro Traveler comes in four colors: black, red, silver, and white.