I have been thinking about new authentication methods and some of the ideas I came up with are quite interesting.  One of them is the Mouse Pad Key.

Mouse Pad Key uses the optical mouse to read keys on a sheet of paper by moving the mouse around on top of the paper.  The idea is still theoretical because I haven't looked into whether optical mouses can reliably read patterns on a piece of paper.  If the key pattern can be printed on regular papers, then keys can be sent electronically.  If not, then a special printing process may enhance security.

A special mouse driver will be necessary, of course, and unubiquitous availability of optical mouse makes deployment impractical but I thought the idea was interesting enough to share.