Remember the guys who came up with the VERY cool Optimus keyboard?

Well, now they have a new toy. The Mus2! A “cordless optical two-button mouse [that] controls the cursor on the screen and looks like one.”

Available in black or white, this little guy runs for $40USD and can be purchased now online from their website! Not sure how it would feel in your hand and how the buttons would work, but it’s definitely something different and looks pretty cool.

Oh, and while I’m on the topic, if you check out the “Answers” section on the Optimus page, they say that they expect the keyboard to be out some time this year!! WOO HOO!

A few interesting tidbits have cropped up this past few days involving Apple. Sources speculate that some time in April, Apple will hold a special event celebrating the iPOD’s birthday with something spectacular. The possible release of a REAL Video iPOD (as opposed the current iPOD with Video)! The unit will occupy the entire front of the current iPOD with a touch-activated scroll wheel which, if on the 5th gen form factor would be really nice. With only a month to go, I can’t wait to see this confirmed.

Another interesting bit of news is that Apple applied for a new patent. Nothing overly fancy alone but….

Basically, the patent apps detail method for recognising data from a multipoint touch sensitive display and interpreting this data to allow things like zooming in on an image etc (a bit like the two finger scrolling on new Powerbooks enables window scrolling).

Before brushing this off, you should check this out on the NYU Media Research Lab website.

First of all, I want one, and second of all, I want one! Imagine the endless possibilities that this application could bring. This brings us so much closer the “future” that we as kids imagined and for some of us, still hope to see. I can’t wait

Those of you who complain about ghosting on LCD displays will no longer have an excuse. ViewSonic announced yesterday (February 8), that later this year, LCD displays with a 1ms response time will start hitting the store shelves.

There is also mention of a ViewSonic OverDrive chip, “a plug-in replacement for a microprocessor designed to speed up the PC in which it is used,” but I’m a little confused about that.. I’ll have to wait for more info on that one.

ViewSonic has pretty much been the leader in display technology and were the first to come out with current 4ms displays. Maybe they’ll come up with pre-emptive displays that’ll show you even before you know you want it.

Well, that’s what AOL and Yahoo are hoping you’ll do. Postage on email has been something that’s been talked about for years. I remember rumors about this back when I worked at a local ISP about 6 years ago. I guess it has finally come to light and someone’s taking the first real step in implementing this now. The system would allow a user to pay 1/4 to 1 cent postage on their email to ensure that it will reach the recipient.

In AOL’s case, if the sender pays postage on their email it is guaranteed to be in your mailbox. It skips all spam checks and gets marked as “AOL Certified E-Mail.” Everything else will have to make its way thru the jungle of filters as they do now. Yahoo has yet to have figured out how their system will function but I can only imagine that it would basically be the same.

Now, call me crazy but the reason that AOL and Yahoo are doing this in the first place is to prevent junk mail, and phishing scams. But what makes them think that spammers won’t just pay to send their spam? Does this not just provide an even MORE direct route to you? Spamming must be working for them or else it just wouldn’t happen. What’s a little added cost? I can see that this will force a few spammers to stop sending to random email addresses but even that I think is a small price to pay… Business expense? haha.

Anyways, it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Who knows, it might just become the norm and it might just actually work. We’ll find out soon enough…

Two security patches were released yesterday by Adobe for their two popular graphics applications.

Adobe states:

The identified vulnerability allows non-privileged users permission to change key program files. This condition presents a risk for shared, multi-user systems. On such systems, a hostile user could take advantage of this condition to replace these program files with malicious or harmful code that could read, write, or destroy sensitive data if subsequently run by a privileged user.

Both patches can be found here:
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332644.html

According to the patch log, it appears that there is just 1 file you need to download which will patch both programs.