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Interesting Keyboard/Mouse Combo
Rimmel sent us a fairly hacked up keyboard/mouse combo. It's only a prototype, and the guy actually claims a patent on it (it's a split keyboard with a joystick. Let's not get full of ourselves ;) but he does have a lot of interesting notes on it, including timing notes to demonstrate that integrating the mouse this way is a speed gain. I'd tend to agree since I use a thinkpad with a mouse nipple half the time. Reaching for a mouse sucks, but the other half of that is playing a video game with anything besides a mouse is impossible.
Read the article, the inventor here managed to keep the weight down to that of an Intellimouse (granted, the Intellimouse is easily the heavist mouse I've ever used). He didn't address my #2 concern (after the weight one of course): This looks a lot more fragile than your average mouse. Mice take quite of bit of punishment over their lifetime, and now this guy is attaching half of an ultralight keyboard to the nose of it and we are supposed to avoid banging it on every other thing littering our desks. Worse, he used a laptop keyboard, and laptop keyboards generally have terrible tactile feedback.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
I know this will probably get modded down to where no one will see it, but I don't see why this guy doesn't deserve a patent. Yes, it's a split keyboard, but one of the split parts actually IS the mouse, a really bright (IMHO) idea that deserves to be rewarded. More importantly, this isn't a software patent, but an actual physical invention that has to be built and manufactured, and therefore, an exclusive right to distribute and/or license its design seems appropriate.
Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of patents these days are pretty bad, but this thing actually seems fairly inventive and worthy of the rights.
In 1992 - 1993 I was involved in an ergonomics experiment sponsored by the Bank of America New Technology Centre. The experiment gauged, among other things, how much time it took for people to reach for the mouse from their keyboard.
The results were very surprising: Right-handed people who train themselves to use the mouse with their left hand were 40% faster at completing tasks under Windows and OS/2. This had to do with the following:
For those of you too young to remember this, Presentation Manager was the user interface standard proposed by IBM and implemented by OS/2 and Windows 3.x. Many of its ugly recommendations are still enforced in Microsoft systems.
It was measured that many tasks were accomplished faster by navigating with the mouse (left hand) to a given screen area, then using the cursor, Enter, or control keys to perform an action, or use the numeric keys for data capture, etc.
I still use my mouse with the left hand. You may wish to try it! It only takes about a day or so to get used to the new position. No, I didn't change the buttons' configuration. Left button is still left button even though I use the mouse with the left hand. It's a lot easier to move the mouse to the left of the keyboard on a system that doesn't belong to you than to re-map the buttons ::wink::.
I will ask if they ever published this research; if they did, I'll post back a follow up comment with the link to it.
Cheers!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
I have seen SGI workstations that have a bank of 6 dials/knobs for doing similar things. They are for XYZ Rotate and XYZ Translate. I imagine they are serial devices, so you can probably use them on just about anything as long as you have software support. Anyone know where to get them?
~GoRK
Just what the world needs - a mouse you can never find when your computer really wants you to... :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Then this would probably have given you an aneurism.
(It's amazing etch-a-sketch art, not Mr. Goatsex)
-B
do it right. This guy certainly put the legwork into researching his plan, and his comparisons of weight and center of gravity with the Microsoft Intellimouse are brilliant.
When I first saw the device, I thought, "Nah, it's going to be way too heavy and awkward." He's already got the research done to make sure it isn't, and he does a great job of disproving a lot of problems that users like me would consider. In fact, his product demo on that page is better than the documentation that comes with a lot of the products I've purchased.
Even if the mouse/kb combo concept doesn't take off, this guy deserves a great project management job somewhere. I'd love to write code for somebody who puts this kind of thought into their work.
What's your damage, Heather?
I yearn for the good old days when if you were talking about a keyboard and mouse, it meant Tom was trying to kill Jerry, who had hidden inside a piano. And Tom would play a damn good bit of Liszt trying to do it!
You normally use both thumbs for spaces. At the very least put it on the stationary side since is a very common key used.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I always wanted to take apart an old mouse, and mount two dials on the front end of the keyboard.
That way, you could have perfect orthogonal motion when doing CAD or drawing work. Doing diagonals will take some skill.
The inspiration? The Etch-A-Sketch. I dunno, call it the Etch-A-Mouse.
I love this idea. I don't know how practical it is until I have one 'in hand', so to speak but It would go a ong way to help something that's been driving me nuts for a while. It was pointed out in Dilbert as a joke, but its the absolute truth:
We have designed the modern PC for people with three hands.
This becomes most apparent when you're working in 3d apps, like Lightwave, 3d Studio, Truespace, or the like. You've got one hand working the controls, one hand on the mouse and you wish you could have a third hand on the number pad.
The other thing that drives me nuts on mice is the wheel. So my mouse maps X and Y axes to the standard motion of the mouse. Why can't I map the wheel to a Z axis? The best example of this is the Kensington TurboRing trackball. The 'wheel' is actually a ring set into the top of the trackball and indeed rotates about the Z-axis. Why don't 3d apps allow for this?
Ignore the craze ravings of a 3d geek.
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404 Error:
Yes, I agree. I think some people use either or both thumbs for the space. This is why most ergonomic keyboards have two space bars, one on each side. It would be nice to see this designed with a space bar on both sides, and the backspace key moved to its normal position.
To each his (ambiguous masculine third person pronoun includes both genders...and transgenders, I suppose) own.
BTW, I'm the kind that loves the point-stick (I'm not using the N-word in my posts!) to the extent that I only consider laptops with the point-stick as an option. Kinda narrows down the choices, but at least I can choose between IBM and Toshiba models. (I've owned the Workpad z50 and, currently, a Toshiba Satellite 2805).
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-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The really amusing part is watching the counter at the top of the guy's site. When I first hit it, it was at 27. I reloaded about ten seconds later, and it was at 99.
It's like watching a Slashdotting in action...
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
More and more people are getting fysical injuries when sitting in front of a computer. Is that because they stretch for the mouse, and then back to the keyboard ? (ie _moves_)... no its all the static movement... yes!
Furthermore, what kind of mouse do you perfer to use ? What kind of keyboard ? I personly fancy those "broken" keyboards form MS and Logitech, since they relax both hands, neck and shoulders. The same goes for the mouse. I use a logitech mouseman wheel simply because it supports the hand and gives a very relaxing working position. Any ordinary plain simple mouse gives me the creeps in less then 10 minutes.
We need to move more, not less...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
How young do you have to be to think this way? The only decent video game I've ever played with a mouse was Arkanoid-- and then only because a mouse is basically an inverted trackball. For anything else I'd rather have a regular old keyboard or a joystick (and in some cases two joysticks). Maybe a steering wheel for racing games, but those play fine with joysticks too.
I do not have a signature
YOU didn't think of it did you? How bout anyone else here. Go look at the page, look at his designs, look at the consideration he's put into this and come back and tell me its not an invention. It is. Not calling this an invention is like calling a light bulb "just a piece of wire headed by electricity...for peats sake haven't you seen lightning light up the sky".
Burn Hollywood Burn
Interesting, but nothing new really. Just like all other 'inovative' keyboards, this one will be useful for the carpal tunnel folk, but won't convert the mainstream user. The keyboard is about the least improved part of a computer ever, so I doubt anything will change until we get telepathy-enabled computers. In fact, the keyboard has been around since typewriters, so why would we ever change the design? The only really innovative keyboard design I have seen has been the Plycon Flex Keyboard as reviewed in this VH Review.