“A lot of people have asked me about this, so I thought I’d put the information here, linked under my home page:

Yes, I am the inventor of the sideways “smiley face” (sometimes called an “emoticon”) that is commonly used in E-mail, chat, and newsgroup posts.  Or at least I’m one of the inventors.

By the early 1980’s, the Computer Science community at Carnegie Mellon was making heavy use of online bulletin boards or “bboards”.  These were a precursor of today’s newsgroups, and they were an important social mechanism in the department – a place where faculty, staff, and students could discuss the weighty matters of the day on an equal footing.  Many of the posts were serious: talk announcements, requests for information, and things like “I’ve just found a ring in the fifth-floor men’s room.  Who does it belong to?”  Other posts discussed topics of general interest, ranging from politics to abortion to campus parking to keyboard layout (in increasing order of passion).  Even in those days, extended “flame wars” were common.

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You can control your mouse pointer with keyboard keys in all windows versions. When your mouse stops working, you can enable this keyboard feature to complete your important work. This keyboard mouse can performs all tasks same like a normal mouse.

Follow the given steps to activate the keyboard mouse:

1. To edit this feature, first you should log onto your computer with administrative rights.
2. To activate this feature, press Alt+Shift+NumLock keys at once and you will receive a small MouseKey box.
3. To keep MouseKeys on, click on Ok button or click on cancel button to cancel MouseKeys box.
4. Click on Settings button, if you want to adjust the mouse cursor detail settings.
5. Here a new dialog box will appear with the title Settings for MouseKeys, now you can manage all mouse settings for example mouse cursor speed, acceleration and some other features.

Now using Numeric keypad, you can move your mouse pointer.

The controls are:

* 1,2,3,4,6,7,8 and 9 keys are used to move the mouse cursor into different directions.
* Key 5 is used as mouse click button.
* Insert key used to hold down mouse button.
* + Sign used to double click on any object.
* Delete button used to release the mouse.
* Click on NumLock button to disable this keyboard mouse featur

To keep MouseKeys on, click on Ok button or click on cancel button to cancel MouseKeys box

Click on Settings button, if you want to adjust the mouse cursor detail settings.