The lipii Beam Station lets you use any FOMA phone as a computer mouse. The only question this leaves in my mind is, why would I want to use my phone as a computer mouse?

The Beam Station is a small USB device you plug into your computer. The Station reads the infrared from your phone. That means you can use your phone keypad to do all sorts of things. You can move the cursor, control the browser and even apparently enter text. The question, still, is why? I like technology that makes things easier. This seems like it would make things more awkward.

Only Windows is supported by the device, so you can’t use it for your Mac or Linux system, not that anyone on Mac or Linux would wan’t to. And even then, you would have to go to Japan and drop about $16 to get one of these for yourself. Most of the phones with infrared are in Japan, anyway, so that’s the best place for it.