Touchpad Turns Your Device Into a $400 Trackpad
by Eric March on February 21, 2008 at 3:31 am
So you’re there, right? At your computer, doing whatever it is you do when your wireless mouse dies. Should have charged it, shouldn’t you? Well, too late now, isn’t it? You’re dead in the water, right? Not a spare mouse in the house. But you have an iPod Touch, right? Or perhaps an iPhone? Then the good news is that you can use it as a very expensive wireless track pad thanks to Touchpad by Jahanzeb Sherwan. With this cool little app and a working VNC connection, you can control your mouse; move, click, scroll — all the usual functions you’d expect from your average track pad. It is based on VNSea, so it also allows you to type using the keyboard on the Touch. It is surprisingly responsive, with little to no lag, and installation was pretty much the same as it is with VNSea. I’ll let Mr. Sherwan explain the how and where:
Touchpad enables you to use your iPhone as a wireless touchpad. You can control the mouse on your PC using just your iPhone. You can move the mouse around, click, double-click, and even drag. Vertical scrolling is even possible.
You can use it to control videos, show pictures, advance slides in a presentations — whatever a regular touchpad can do.
Installation instructions:
- Start Installer.app, and go to Sources. Click “Edit”, and then Add this repository: http://cnp.qlnk.net/
- After the refresh, install Touchpad from the Utilities category.
- You’ll need to have VNC installed on your desktop. I recommend TightVNC.
Now, I use UltraVNC for Windows myself, but whatever turns your crank. If you have need of a wireless trackpad and keyboard that fits in your pocket, you could do much worse than to give this a shot. If nothing else, it’s a bucket of cool. But don’t take my word for it, have a look at the video yourself.
(Source: modmyifone)
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Posted in Application Related
February 21st, 2008 at 5:39 am
Neat stuff, though, I don’t know how often I’ll need something like this (I didn’t make much use of the VNSea client already as is).
February 21st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
[...] Touchpad.app [...]
February 21st, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Either do I, but it could be handy for using it as a kind of remote control on laptops or a pocketable mouse and keyboard for HTPCs. That could be cool.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:19 am
I tried it out. So Awesome! I know its simple tech but it boggles my mind.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Yeah, I keep loading it up just to play with it. It really is quite neat — it’s like a regular VNC session but you don’t have the desktop displayed on your Touch so the response time is a lot faster and it works much better. I like it!
April 10th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
[...] Touchpad.app [...]