Replacing The Mouse With Thumb Control

from the sounds-reasonable dept

Tue, Apr 20th 2004 11:19am — Mike Masnick

MIT's Tech Review has a short article about a new type of mouse replacement that sounds like a fairly intelligent input device that takes out much of the carpal tunnel risk by recognizing that simple thumb movements can easily designate where you want the cursor to move. So, the device is basically a one-handed, baseless joystick with a flat top where simple thumb movement designate where to move on the screen without much exertion or muscle strain. The side of the device contains typical mouse buttons. Combined with the Twiddler one-handed keyboard, and you could have quite the ergonomic solution to computer input, while also allowing for mobility with wearable type computers. Of course, as with any such devices, if the learning curve seems to be too much, it will never catch on. That may be the case with the one-handed keyboard, but the mouse replacement might not be such a big stretch.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

2 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

dorpus, 20 Apr 2004 @ 11:30am

Long Parade
There have been plenty of alternative mouse-like devices that have been invented since the 1980s. There have been mice that do not involve finger movement at all, but detects the 3-D movement of the arm. They have invariably failed to catch on, due to lack of marketing or practicality.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 20 Apr 2004 @ 12:07pm

No Subject Given
Not a lot of info to work with there, but it appears to me that you'd have to put it back down to type with your "mouse hand" again. Makes it pretty much worthless in my book. I don't know about the rest of the world, but my right hand goes back and forth from the mouse to the keyboard all day long. And if I had to pick up and put down the mouse every time I used it, I'd find a new mouse.

That's my $.02
[ link to this | view in chronology ]