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mouse

Full-screen control

Air Mouse for iPhone and iPod Touch gives you several reasons you would want to turn your iPhone into a remote control over your keyboard and mouse: ease, convenience, and a broad range of control. The gesture mode of navigation takes advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer to move your mouse across the screen. The touch-pad mode keeps your arm stationary while you trace the mouse trajectory on the iPhone face with your finger.

Add to those a full virtual keyboard with extra buttons, such as Control and Alt, that are compatible with your PC or Mac, a second keyboard … Read more

The 404 240: Where we can't find the CNET holiday party

After getting bad news about the death of this year's CNET holiday party, we wallow in sorrow for awhile but count our blessings that our two week vacation is still in tact. We move on to congratulate Logitech on their 1 billionth mouse and recommend a few of our favorite peripherals. We also wag a finger at Canada and unleash a horror story about their massacre of our beloved Sea Unicorn, the Narwhal. Shame on you, we thought you were better than us!

There are two very large problems that are tackled in today's episode. First one is … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 864: Crabs in a bucket

In today's show, Molly gets a new favorite metaphor, Apple deletes the very thought that you should run antivirus on a Mac, .Tel gets our wallets at the ready, and poor widdle Windows' market share drops below 90 percent. The horror! Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 864

Apple deletes Mac antivirus suggestion http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10111958-83.html

Twitter CEO: The revenue’s coming soon, but I won’t tell you how http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10112037-2.html

.Tel them where to find you http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/tel-them-where-to-find-you/

Vista SP2: What's … Read more

Featured Freeware: gMote

gMote is one of the easiest to use mouse gesture tools around. gMote's dual-pane configuration interface makes it a snap to create and program mouse gestures, and takes extra steps to teach new users how it works via a prompt on first run to check out the built-in tutorial.

Press the create button, make your mouse gesture in the test window, and then use a pull-down to assign one of the 30-plus actions. The actions center on browser, media player, and word-processing commands. However, program execution, Web site selection, and hot-key combinations are also easily added actions.

To make … Read more

Logitech keyboard-mouse combo is pricey, but darned near perfect

You might balk at the $130 price tag, but this time more actually means better. The Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Pro combo puts two of our favorite products together in one package: the Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Keyboard and the Logitech MX 1100 Cordless laser mouse.

Both products received very high marks from their respective editors, and the MX1100 mouse even managed to win an Editors' Choice award. This time around, we're sticking to our guns and rewarding this winning combo as well.

One of the most significant hardware changes in the bundle that we don't speak much … Read more

Featured Freeware: AltMove Manager

It adds new functionality to your mouse, there's little to learn, and it's free. AltMove Manager is a mouse and desktop enhancement manager that can move and resize windows that are locked, grab a screenshot, and magnify a window under the mouse. You can easily add a few others through the Actions menu.

As an executable, the app doesn't need to be installed--just run the executable for the shortcuts to be in place. The regular settings include some standard program options for running the executable at start-up and keeping it on top. Advanced settings let you move … Read more

The cure for 'mouse arm': Gyroscopic mice

Do you suffer from hand and arm pain while mousing? Many factors can be blamed, from poor posture to a badly designed ergonomic environment. Unfortunately, simply adjusting one's seat or desk height doesn't always solve the problem (and sometimes you can't adjust either of these much at all).

I was a longtime sufferer of the condition I dubbed "mouse arm," which at one point got so bad that after a few hours, I would have to awkwardly mouse with my left hand for the rest of the day. About five years ago (long before I … Read more

Copyright extension of 45 years to net just $40 for most performers

Just when I think the freedom brigade is on a roll, I read nonsense like this from the European Union, as reported in Ars Technica, suggesting that the EU is considering extending copyright terms by 45 years in order to guarantee income for aging artists. US entitlements like Medicare having nothing on this....

Every few years the US extends copyright terms because Disney lobbies the heck out of Congress' weak-kneed legislators to prevent Mickey Mouse from becoming public domain. After pilfering the commons for the basis of much of its revenue (Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and even, perhaps, Mickey Mouse), Disney keeps going back to the congressional well to ensure its God-given right to make money on old intellectual property forever and ever.

But that's the US. I would have hoped that the EU would show a bit more common sense. Alas! Its proposal completely fails to solve even the problem it sets out to fix, as Open Rights Group notes:

"The Commission makes much of the challenging financial situation facing aging performers," it says. "While we do not accept that IP law is an appropriate mechanism to deal with this situation, as we will demonstrate in the second section of this submission, it also turns out to be a very inefficient one."… Read more

The 404 173: Where we wish Natali Del Conte a happy 21st birthday

Happy 21st birthday, Natali. We hope you're having a great time out there on the best, err...West Coast! Even though Jeff is mad at me for not getting Morgan Spurlock on the show, we squash the beef and get going on a great show. Today we talk about magic noodles, the Facebook movie, and Steve Jobs' impending death. We also debut the best set of voicemails ever played on The 404. No hype!

I can't stop reiterating this sentence in my head: Morgan Spurlock served me ice cream cake on a boat in New York city last … Read more