Whether it’s a clicker for scrolling through your slides or a laser pointer for directing people’s attention toward certain things, the core technologies behind presentations hasn’t changed much in years.
That’s where a new Kickstarter project for the so-called “Mara Pen” comes into play. A nifty handheld tool, the Mara Pen is described as a combination of two products: a slide changer and a computer mouse that you can use in the air, without having to move it on a hard surface.
“The story of Mara Pen comes from a situation where a friend of ours had a problem with their wrist because of long-time usage of a computer mouse,” Toms Kreicbergs, marketing manager for the project, told Digital Trends. “Since we were studying mechatronics, we wanted to find a solution to the problem. We moved aircraft navigation technology to a human-computer-interface (HCI) device, because we thought we could control the computer in a more intuitive way with the motion of a hand. This motion module is the main component of the Mara Pen. We are using it to convert normal motion to a computer control signal.”
For anyone who regularly gives presentations, the ability to not just click through slides, but also highlight text on screen, select content, open documents, draw on slides, drag-and-drop, and even rotate 3D images is certainly exciting. It’s a technology which takes an established intuitive interface and applies it to a different domain.
At present, Mara Pen is raising money on Kickstarter. If you’d like to get hold of a unit for yourself, prices start at $99 for the early bird package, which comes with both a pen and a magnetic charger. Shipping is planned to take place in January and February 2017 — no doubt just in time for that post-holiday “what did you get for Christmas?” presentation.
