Logitech NuLOOQ increases productivity

Apr 15, 2008 by Dan Taylor    2 Comments    Posted under: Technology

While my shiny new Mac has not yet arrived, some of the stuff that I ordered to go with it has arrived today. 85% of it is Mac specific, so it’s not really doing me much good on my winblows based machine. However, one of the new pieces of hardware that arrived is truly changing my computing experience right out of the box.

At a suggestion from Bottle, I figured as long as I’m making this big of an Amazon.com order, why not just chuck the Logitech NulOOQ in there as well. And oh how I am glad that I did. Logitech bills the NulOOQ as ‘It’s not a mouse, it’s your mouses’ best friend’, and I can honestly say, it’s all that and then some.

Upon installing the software a bunch of popular programs and associated shortcuts are preinstalled (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Elements, Firefox, etc.). First stop Firefox. A twist of the scrolling wheel is now rolling me through tabs, while and up and down on the wheel is scrolling me smoothly through pages, and a nudge left or right is moving backwards and forwards in browsing history. Could I have done this with a mouse? Sure, but why all the extra motion when, I’ve now got controls all under my fingertips with my left hand.

Another great feature is that in addition to the presets (which you can remap any way you choose) you can also set up your own custom settings. The iTunes settings were not preset, as I can imagine everyone has their own preferences of how they’d like it to work. Well, I’ve been listening to iTunes all afternoon, and haven’t once had to alt/tab to the program itself to change the volume, play, next track, previous track and/or mute/pause. I have them assigned to touch sensitive numbers on the top of the device (see top image above). Square is play/pause, III is forward, I is backwards. Ready for the super-slickness? The entire top of the control pad functions exactly like the scroll wheel on an iPod. In other words, I can now control iTunes volume just by sliding my finger around the top of the device. Nice.

iTunes is already a preinstalled feature device (but commands left blank). The NulOOQ is also programmable to virtually any program you\’ve got on your machine. Simply go to the main menu of the controls, select ‘add program’ and then start adding keyboard shortcuts. The ‘lOOQ then recognizes which program you’re working in and maps key commands specific to that program. In other words, let’s say I’m working in Ableton Live and want to map a twist of the wheel to a filter effect. No problem. I add Ableton to my commands in the NulOOQ menu, and map the specific keyboard command or mouse gesture to a right turn of the NulOOQ wheel. How cool is that?

This settings can also be exported in case you ever switch machine (or work onsite for a client). This works out quite nicely for me, as I’m mapping custom settings today on winblows, and will hopefully by this time tomorrow be working on a mac. No need to remap, just export from winblows, and import on the mac. I also found this site, that’s offering up a bunch of preconfigured mappings (most are specific to <snicker>Vista</snicker>). Hmmm…now to figure out some mapping for WoW for some SERIOUS pwn ftw!

I’ve only used it thus far with Firefox, Word, and iTunes, I’m sure this is going to get REALLY fun when I start working with it in Photoshop (think magnifiers and brush size) and Final Cut (shutteling through video…oh nice!). Is this object necessary for your everyday computing? Probably not. Is it a wicked awesome cool productive time saving the keys glow blow ultimate geek toy? Abso f#*(ing lutly!