OmniDazzle 1.0 Public Beta

Mouse cursor special effects app from The Omni Group. A few of the effects are useful, but more are just supposed to be fun. (It’s worth noting that the most useful effect, “flashlight”, has been available for some time in Boinx’s Mouseposé.)

More interesting than the cursor effects is OmniDazzle’s configuration window; it’s a very slick, well-polished, totally custom UI. You choose an effect from an animated list inspired by Front Row, complete with black background and “glossy reflective floor” effect. (Update: A few readers emailed to point to CoverFlow as an inspiration for this UI.) Those effects come at a price, though — just leaving the configuration window open but idle in the background consumes about the 50 percent of the CPU on my PowerBook.

★ Sunday, 4 June 2006