AOL Joins The Hardware Marketeers

The Reverend writes, "Salon has a frightening article about AOL-branded keyboards. There are three hot keys up top (where 'Internet' keyboards generally have a few buttons to automatically go to your favorite Web pages or open your e-mail prog) that link to AOL services. There is a 'better' version due out this fall that has 17 such buttons. I'm scared by this."

Compaq and Dell are among the PC manufacturers who already ship PCs with similar "direct contact" buttons, a calculated bet that convenience and ubiquity are going to beat due diligence on the part of consumers. Embedding a URL in hardware will certainly make alternatives (no matter how easy) just a tad less convenient than the built-in link. I wonder how the linked AOL addresses are embedded in the keyboard, and whether they're alterable. Even if they're not, would it be difficult to set up a layer which "listened" to your keyboard and performed on-the-fly translation when you hit one of those buttons?

At least one of those keys is straightforwardly user-programmable: as the article says, "[D]on't worry; there is one key, with the infantilizing name "My Key," that lets you create a link to any site on the Web." Wow -- users get one key.

AOL may change their mind about shipping these to anyone willing to fork over a few dollars for shipping. For the novelty value, or even for a one-programmable-button keyboard, less than $10 may replace a lot of coffee-ruined keyboards. Then again, the production of AOL come-on CDs doesn't seem to have waned. (But if there's a practical way to hack the pre-set presets, dollars-ta-donuts they pull the deal faster than you can say "Netpliance.")

Be grateful they haven't gotten to "direct-Internet-link" buttons on mice. Yet.

Comments

18 extra keys

[Tim Pierce]

What's different here are the 18 colorful keys lining the top of the keyboard, most of which have generic subject names like "travel" or "auction."

Eighteen control keys is good news. It means that at last we can have really useful Emacs keyboards.

"To spell-check, just hit Auctions-Travel-Q. If you want to spell check against a French dictionary, use Music-Auctions-Travel-Q instead."

Note: I am only partly joking.