A number of years ago I read a tech column (Newsweek's "Cyberscope" or
somesuch) that had a short article about a new kind of pointing
device, a sort of combination of a mouse and a pen. It wasn't like the
"mouse/pens" I currently see advertised, which you write with freehand
-- it was a pen-shaped stylus embedded in a base. When one exerted
pressure on it (as IF writing -- the pen itself didn't actually move!)
the cursor would move on the screen. (Imagine one of those pens you
find chained up in banks in their little holders. Now imagine pushing
it as if you were writing in it, without it moving it. That's the
basic idea.) It sounded like a *terrific* idea (the idea basically
being that you're moving the fine-motor muscles in your wrists instead
of the major muscles of your arms), but I never heard of it again, and
all the pen-like devices I've heard about since then aren't what I'm
looking for.

So: Can you give me a status update on this device? I'd like to find
the original article if possible (I read about it around 1999, I
think); any information on the ergonomic value of such a device; a
vendor; and a price.

Hi there,

I believe the product is the UllmanMouse, named after the designer Dr.
Johan Ullman, a Swedish ergonomics expert.

UllmanMouse
http://www.ullman.se/ullmanmouse/home/

Their site says: "The UllmanMouse production is going on and shipment
is planned to November 2002", although until recently it said
"shipment is planned to September 2002".

Information on its ergonomic value:
http://www.ullman.se/ullmanmouse/mouse/theory.asp

The earliest article in English I can find is dated April 02, 2001:

PCWorld: Researcher Claims Mouse Breakthrough
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,46043,00.asp

One day later the story was at CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/04/03/swedish.researcher.mouse.idg/index.html


Search strategy:

mouse "like a pen"
://www.google.com/search?q=mouse+%22like+a+pen%22


Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

This is brilliant! Thank you!

Tweebiscuit --

Is the IBM Trackpoint, used in its Thinkpad portable computers, what
you're thinking of?

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Not quite. What I'm trying to describe is rather difficult to imagine
-- but think of a TrackPoint with a pen sticking in it -- one would
move the cursor by pushing the pen as though one where writing, see?

So the "pen" is sort of like a fine-tuned joy stick? The "tip"
anchored but the top moves with your hand?

K~  <trying hard to picture this>

Yes, the bottom is anchored, but the top doesn't move -- or at least,
moving the top isn't what moves the cursor on the screen. Applying
pressure to the BOTTOM is what controls the device -- again, you hold
it just as you would a pen, and push on it just as you would push a
pen to write (i.e., with the fine motor muscles in your fingers and
wrist), but the stylus/pen/whatever doesn't actually move, though it
DOES pick up the pressure being applied, just like when you push on a
TrackPoint the dot doesn't actually move, but it picks up the
pressure.