DontClick.it

It started with voice recognition and most recently, multiple sensor touch displays on the iPhone showed us how to quickly and intuitively zoom in and out of an image. No matter what the R&D grant money produces, a vast majority of the world still relies on the simple mouse and more specifically mouse click. What would happen, however, if we moved the click from the equation? We see glimpses of this in the Mouse Gestures Firefox plugin but it too relies on a click of some sort. While the click only takes milliseconds to accomplish, it’s effects are wider felt. Each time you click, you stop moving your mouse. There’s not clicking “en-route” and because of this, you are losing time. What if you could navigate web pages, vote in polls, and otherwise carry on your day to day routine without ever having to click? Flipping pages could be as easy as moving to the corner and “pulling” to the left. Researchers at DONTCLICK.IT, based in Germany have been exploring this very topic and have come up with a wonderful demonstration site. Aside from being entirely clickless (careful, they keep statistics on how many clicks you perform, accidental or otherwise), DONTCLICK.IT has a wonderful history of the click, tracking it back to the PARC and Apple days. There is also a whimsical product page for a spike lined cover you can place over your mouse buttons to train yourself to stop clicking. Complete with feedback forms (use (SHIFT+) TAB) to switch between the fields), statistics, surveys, and proof of concepts on overcoming replacing the click with just mouse gestures, DONTCLICK.IT is at worst a satisfying time waster and at best, a sneak peak into a world beyond tomorrow. -Thanks Charles