Pop quiz: What can a group of crazy college geeks do with $700? Answer: Invent a device that may just one day revolutionize the computer interface. That's what a team of students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute accomplished with their recent invention of the 3-D MagicMouse, a tiny device worn as a ring that lets a PC user move objects on a monitor simply by waving a finger like a magic wand. It may not be as pretty as the bejeweled mouse, but the latter certainly didn't win an Invention of the Year award from Popular Science.

The MagicMouse team has not yet sought to commercialize the device, and instead is focusing on adding gesture recognition, and also shrinking it so it'll look like a normal ring. Just imagining such a gadget causes 21-year-old co-inventor Mike Cretella to excitedly declare the MagicMouse as "something Apple would be interested in."

Who knows? One day, we journalists may be monitoring our stress with one ring while we try to meet deadline with the help of another. — Tony Kontzer

Popular Science, via Engadget