I often travel with a laptop. I almost invariably travel with a charged mobile phone. I enjoy using the fancy multi-touch trackpad in my MacBook Pro, but an odd thing happens sometimes when I've put my phone down nearby on the desk; I reach automatically to try and use the phone as a computer mouse. One of those amusing peculiarities of muscle-memory and reflex that can surprise, when you're engaged by something, within the computer, verging upon a liminal state.

It's a slightly amusing quirk, but when I think further about it, I find plenty of reasons why it perhaps ought to work.

External mice are more useful than trackpads, although not enough use to me to justify carting one around. My phone is palm-sized, about the ideal weight, is already paired with my laptop over bluetooth, has clickable buttons all over one face, and an optical camera on the reverse. In short, it already has most of the technology needed to be a wireless optical mouse.

Most but not all. I'm a bit dubious about whether it could be done in software alone. I doubt that the lens will focus well enough to motion tracking without a special surface, and it's completely lacking the light source, but it is almost tempting enough to try. It might be feasible with some sort of very recognisable surface, perhaps a monchrome checkerboard grid, which would be very easy to render and print.

posted by cms on 2009-04-26 17:15:28