I know exactly what this is and it is definitely HOT. Make working in AutoCAD sooooo much more enjoyable...Perhaps a little more detail will make this post more interesting.

I got one of these for 3D animation in Maya - it's pretty neat, although a little less responsive than I'd like on my G5. It's basically used instead of the mouse to navigate in 3D space... you can push and pull to go up & down, twist to look sideways, and tilt to move forwards and back. It's fun to use to move around in Google Earth!

Everyone in the Product Design department of my company has one of these, and its proved really useful in SolidWorks. Once you get the hang of it, you can really "navigate" the "space" more efficiently.

Oh, and ditto on the Google Earth fun!

Fug. Didn't Griffin Technology do this much better... 5 years ago. I like the functionality but the design...
http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powermate