If I’m not active on my PC, it either times out, or my Office communicator goes from green or red to yellow, indicating no PC activity. This idea ‘moves’ my optical mouse every 10 seconds. I designed and built this with an Arduino and a servo, on the servo is attached a paper disk. A hole is cut in the box lib above the paper disk and covered in clear plastic. I also added a countdown timer as well for fun. If you then position the mouse on the lid, connect to the PC using the USB port, the Arduino counts down to 0 and rotates the server by a few degrees. 10 seconds later it moves the servo back again. The mouse senses it moved across the paper and moves the curser as normal back and forth for ever. 
Automatic mouse mover
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Top marks for an elaborate hardware solution to a trivial software problem 
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I was going to say a slow geared motor would work as well. Or an app like Caffeine for OS X
Actually sometimes if the light is right turning the mouse upside down makes it jitter, but the object of the exercise was to play with Arduino and peripherals and was good fun to build…
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