What's Your Web-Surfing Fingerprint Look Like?

Hey, you. Yeah, you, reading this blog. What are you doing with your life? Killing time at work, are you? Fair enough, I suppose, but where's the creativity gone? What are you doing right now that could someday hang on somebody's wall? Nothing, right? Heck, even monkeys and elephants are millionaire artists in these modern times, and here you are, reading. Jeesh.

Never fear, though, for as it often does, human ingenuity has prevailed. You can now turn your idle Web surfing and e-mailing into fairly interesting illustrations—just one of the functions for the brilliantly hacked 2X Mouse. Just splice together two old serial mice according to this how-to [link], and hook your new mutant mouse into two computers. Start up a full-screen drawing application in one (like the free Gimp) and go about your business on the other. After a while, the second computer will render a unique visual record of your everyday clicking and dragging.

My data-visualization fetish just keeps coming up on this blog, but the 2X Mouse takes it to new heights. A concrete visual record of something as abstract (and ubiquitous) as using a computer? What will my surfing fingerprint look like? Will it look like yours? Bill Gates's? My dad's? A monkey's?? I guess there's only one way to find out. To the IT room's garbage bin!

If you've happened to take the plunge yourself, we'd love to see the results. Post links to your images in the comments, or mail them to webmaster@popsci.com —John Mahoney

PS - Bigup to Instructables where this hack resides—a great site.

Related:
Beermapping
Geotagging Flickr Photos

Comments

[Johnny]

Yeah, but is it art? It would be interesting to compare the fingerprints created by using different applications or games though. I would bet there's a similar look to similar apps.

[Nobody]

This could be used to make apps and games more efficient. Doesn’t seem like much but over an apps life it could save time. Also it could help reduce physical stress on the end user.

[Phil Ouellette]

Funny thing is the picture is of a USB mouse, not a serial mouse like the article referres to.

[--]

"Funny thing is the picture is of a USB mouse, not a serial mouse like the article referres to."
I wonder what the S in USB stands for?

[ChannelFlix.com]

good one Phil :-)

[GRANDEE CORP. TEAM]

Use mouse (1st USB) and ergoclick (2nd USB) to make mousing easy, fast, safty and ... without lifting a finger.
http://www.ergoclick.com/ for details
Thus you will avoid RSI (cases, among gamers and office workers, that are grouing faster than Google shares)

Happy surfing with double mouse (your lovely one + ergolcick)

If you write, while you work with a PC - use this - http://www.ringpen.com/

[Some Guy]

Interesting... It seems like there should be a much easier way to accomplish this, on one computer. I thought there were 'keylogger' type programs that had the ability to track mouse movements. If so, that kind of feature could be used to make these pretty pictures.

[subsmalls]

The link for the directions dosn't work.

[Laura]

Does anyone know the link to the 'how-to'? It doesn't work.

[anzu6banas]

I'm sure that could be done without hardware tweaking. You just need some API functions that track the mouse cursor at a given sampling interval, then dump the coordinates somehow into an image. Sort of the some guy's key logger.

You just need a programmer with time.

[mike]

The easiest, but probably the worst option is to tape two mice together. You might need a bigger hand.

[Organic Chemistry]

I guess this could be opened to a larger philosphical debate on "what is art". yuck, i'll stick with science, thank you.