Move That Mouse: Mouse Distance Measurer
Apple October 27th, 2006The menu-bar on your Macintosh can help define what kind of person you are, and what you do. If you have a extra icons such as iChat, Adium, and Skype, you’re a social person. If you have menu-meters, you like stats and monitoring how your system is performing. If you have an iTunes controller, and an iTunes-rating icon, you love music.
If you have Mouse Distance Measurer, I can’t begin to describe you, but you must love mucking around with pointless apps…or is it really pointless?
Mouse Distance Measurer is a crazy yet cool application by AlphaOmega Software. What does it do you ask? It perches in your menu bar, calculating the distance your mouse has travelled in any given day.
Why should you give this app valuable menubar real estate? How is it handy for everyday use?
Almost everyone has had sore fingers and strained eyes from too much compute use. Why does it happen? Because we spend too long in one sitting at the computer without resting or breaks.
Mouse Distance Measurer can help you with this. By looking at the distance moved at regular intervals, you can have a quick break every set distance; for example, every 100 metres the mouse is moved you could take a quick stretch before sitting down again.
Overall, Mouse Distance Measurer is fun little app (menulet), but it wont appeal to all.
Technorati Tags: application, software
October 27th, 2006 at 8:05 am
You really are an idiot.
When are you gonna digg this?
October 27th, 2006 at 8:07 am
“Me”. You really are an idiot doesn’t really give me much of an idea about what I’m doing wrong, or what I can do to become “not an idiot”. Care to explain?
October 27th, 2006 at 8:16 am
This has been around in Linux for a while its cool to see that it’s finally on the mac.
October 27th, 2006 at 8:44 am
i tell you what you can do… Give us something better to read. You’re giving us stuff that has been around for ages. Granted this time it’s been ported to a Mac, but seriously… who gives a rats ass about a mac?
October 27th, 2006 at 8:52 am
There was another application for the mac that did this same thing way back in the pre-OSX days. I think it’s pretty nifty.
October 27th, 2006 at 9:04 am
@ Me
Don’t like Apple? Then why waste your time commenting on how much you hate them?
Spread the love! http://microsoft.weblogsinc.com/
October 27th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
cool app man, nicely done ;)
October 27th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
In case anyone cares, AlphaOmega Software has quite a negative reputation on MacUpdate and VersionTracker.
October 27th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
WhatPulse(.org) does this and more. It keeps a running tally of how many keys and mouseclicks you do and uploads the number at whatever interval you specify to the server. The beta version of the newest version records mouse distance and allows for sub-profiles (home, work, etc…) as well. The mac version hasn’t had the beta released as of yet however, so you mac fellows will have to wait until the new Win. version is out for that.
October 28th, 2006 at 2:34 am
Hey Glenn, it is sad to see you may have to end up moderating because of some unwelcome comments.
I was wondering, do you know a way to change the icon for “Computer” - the one you see when you use finder, and goto “Go” > “Computer”, because I’d like to change mine to a ACD icon and have it in my sidebar simply to fit with the rest of my icons.
These things may not be right up-to-date that you post, but where does it say your site is about news? I think of it as somewhere you post things you come across day-to-day.
Keep up the good work.
October 28th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Hi Ryan. You can select a file in Finder, run “Edit > Get Info” (command-I) to open its Info window, then select and “Edit > Copy” (command-C) or “Edit > Paste” (command-V) from/to the small image in the upper-left corner of the Info window. But I don’t know if there’s a file that represents the “Computer” icon you could change using that method.
October 29th, 2006 at 10:32 am
That doesn’t work because you don’t have the write permissions, anyway to get those permissions - I knew how to change icons already, but thanks for the response.