Every now and then, somebody wants to revolutionize the mouse – from the now-standard scroll wheel that designer Eric Michelman introduced in 1995, to the air mouse that Logitech rolled out just a year ago. Some changes stick, some don’t, but no one ever stops trying.
The Australian company Cyber Sport took its own crack at reinventing the interface with the Orbita, which turns the entire puck-shaped body of the mouse into a giant scroll wheel. Instead of just dragging it around on the desk like an ordinary mouse, flicking the ball-bearing-mounted top shell sends it spinning in place, performing the same task the scroll wheel on an ordinary mouse normally does. That could mean anything from moving down a Web page to tracking through video footage with precision like a jog dial.
Naturally, this causes some issues with buttons, but Cyber Sport designers have worked around them. A press to the mouse’s indented center acts as a left click, and a press to the rim acts as a right click. To orient the mouse, since there is no cord or “top”, users must scroll until a discrete white button is facing the computer, then press it, to set the mouse’s natural position. (It only needs to happen once on each workstation for calibration.)
Cyber Sport will roll out the Orbita in Australia, Europe and the United States in January 2009, and it will retail for $98.50. More details are available through Cyber Sport’s Web site.
The Orbita Mouse in its Docking Bay
The Bottom of the Orbita Mouse
