To we nerds it has never been a secret. We have always known how the pointer moves on the screen when you move the mouse. What has not been known until now is what happens when the movement data is transferred to the computer and how it gets the pointer moving on the screen. There’s a lot of work being done underneath the bonnet, as it were. Check this Flash animation out as it illustrates rather clearly the inner workings of the common computer mouse. Don’t worry, you don’t need to understand Japanese at all.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Laugherating

I’m loathe to admit it. Not because I’m a man, but because its a piece of technology. This kind of thing isn’t worthy of an emotional response, and yet I’ve been an Apple fanboy for almost as many years as Apple has been around. Unlike most pundits, however, I don’t have the funds to warrant going out and buying one (it was nearly as bad as giving birth when I bought my first and only iPod!). I, certainly like millions of others, will just have to wait until finances right themselves or God on High blesses me with one (yeah, right!).

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

Did you see Steve Jobs and Bill Gates chatting at D5, the big Wall Street Journal technology shindig? They spoke with Walt Mossberg and another annoying person for nearly two hours on stage about a wide range of things. I’ve seen most of it and its really informational and fun to see the two people most think of as bitter rivals have real brother-ish moments. While each did engage in a lot of marketspeak, they did seem like friends, which is an interesting concept in big technology.

One of the things I found most interesting, though not surprising, was Bill’s ready knowledge of Mac hardware, and I’m talking about first gen Mac. I still haven’t watched the entirety of the program, though, mostly because the WSJ broke it up until 80 parts. Silly. Well, if you haven’t seen it yet, you don’t have to go through the pain of being forced to view it in a tiny embed patch. You can now get it at the Apple iTunes Music Store for free! Yes. You can even watch it on your Apple TV. Get it here.

written by Tyler Regas

Here is a link to three ads on the Apple site. Nuff’ said.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools

It looks like Parallels is going to get 3D acceleration into the Mac version in the upcoming Release Candidate for 3.0 in the next few weeks. Its about time! I’ve never used Bootcamp (I don’t like the idea of having 256MBs of VRAM whittled down to 64MBs just because its running Windows) and VMware’s Fusion just isn’t cutting it for me. Parallels is THE virtualization tool for the Mac. Period.

The smart guys over at Parallels have also added a sweet new feature for people like me who use Mac OS X and Windows at the same time at work, called SmartSelect. When you right click a file in either Mac or Windows and you open the Open With menu item, Parallels will populate that list with appropriate apps from both OSes! Very sweet. I’ve very, very, very pleased with Parallels.

written by Tyler Regas \\ tags: Cool Tools