Thinking about how your phone's touchscreen operates, you might assume that the so-called optical pads that have been making appearances on recent BlackBerrys (among other devices) operate in a similar fashion -- but you'd be wrong. RIM's official BlackBerry blog is chiming in today to drop some knowledge on us dullards, and it turns out that "optical" isn't just a cute nickname -- the pads do actually operate in much the same way as modern desktop mice, using a low-res infrared camera to capture movement across the surface and translate it into movement. In practical terms, what this m
