This article was published on November 23, 2010

Try This: IOGraph turns your mouse activity into a cool piece of art


Try This: IOGraph turns your mouse activity into a cool piece of art

TNW Quick Hit

IOGraph is a clever utility that takes your mundane mouse activity and turns it into a cool piece of art.

Hits: Rewards your work with art. Can be used as desktop background. Available on all platforms.

Misses: Lacks style, would be nice to have your hotspots mapped with different colours.

Overall: 4/5

The Details:

IOGraph, formally known as MousePath, is a lightweight utility developed by Russian designer Anatoly Zenkov to add a little fun to one’s routine computer work. Available on Windows, Mac and Linux, IOGraph captures all of your mouse movements (and lack thereof) and then maps them on a black canvas, highlighting specific routines, pauses and clicks.

All that you need to do is download the application, install it and then run it. Once open, you simply need to click play inside the IOGraph application, and the application takes care of the rest:

Now you’re wondering what the lines and the circles represent.

The lines are your mouse trails, showing how you navigate around your screen. When your mouse stops, circles are marked on the canvas. The larger the circle, the longer the pauses in mouse activity.

I’m betting that as I write this, I have a rather large circle building on my canvas.

When you decide that you wish to graph no more, you can click the pause button and hit the little down arrow on the bottom right part of the application. This will open a prompt, asking you to save the image and give your brand new piece of art a name.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you “Blogging”:

Look at your graph, now look at mine. Look back to your graph….and back at mine. I’m making art.

Why don’t you give it a go, upload it and post it in the comments? I would love to see how people annotate their daily routine.

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