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Virtual Keyboard
Archfeld sent a strange piece of technology called the Senseboard which
is a portable keyboard, except that there's really not any keys. Or a board. And it can communicate via RF for all your strange wearable applications.
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Cool, but I value tactile feedback. The lack of feeling of me actually *pushing* a button will just feel weird. I wonder if it's something you'd get over, though.
hmmm, i'll just type this up on my invisible typewriter.... do dee doo do do
oh yeah... and first post too
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
They can't sell any full workstations anymore, so they're selling peripherals instead.
Goat sex free since 2001
I'm still trying to get a hang of virtual reality, now real reality is becoming virtual. Get me off this crazy ride called cyberspace.
"I hope they legalize drugs so you hurry up and fucking die." Charles Bronson (the band, not the man)
How cool would it be to play the piano on my desk? Someone may have figured out a way to make money on all of those people playing 'airguitar' everytime Led Zeppelin comes on the radio...
davejenkins.com |
The applications of this product are endless.
:) Itll up the usability and practicality of PDAs and wearable computers in real world situations.
Imagine if you were a mechanic under a car and needed to type up some sorta note or reminder into your computer.
No more grafiti for PDAS
Can't wait to get one.
"Talk about your vaporware!" :)
I need the clickity-clack feedback from my keyboard, I might get used to it, but I doubt this will ever catch on. Maybe it should come with a piece of paper printed with a keyboard. :P
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Perhaps the "click-boing" of a Model M could be played with every sucessful keystroke.
Last post!, since I got hosed by the timeout on "reply" and "post". Darn you slashcode!
how can you consider this stranger? i have thought of such device many times, but more in the line of a glove.
This is great. Now geeks can program AND have sex!
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
for more then 10 years I still sometimes
needs to checks where my fingers are...
I wonder if a drawing of a keyboard on the table
or a picture could be use as a reference. That
would make me more comfortable with this invention.
I think this is pretty awesome, but I'd be concerned about how accurate it is. I can usually tell when I nail a wrong key, and I can tell I've already hit the backspace about 5 times typing this.
So instead of being able to type while your looking at something, you'd have to keep looking at the damn screen correct? I think this would be more of a pain in the ass than anything else. Unless of course your in a chat room or something.
Backspace used: about 25-40 times
Can all fish swim?
Not all that long ago, if you saw someone walking down the street, talking to someone who wasn't there, and typing on a keyboard that wasn't there, you'd wonder what institution he escaped from.
Now, it's just an alpha geek talking on his cell phone and checking his email (with a monitor embedded in his Oakley's no doubt).
Great, I allready have a hard enough time getting my mother to find the crtl or delete key...
Support Texas Troops use TXGoogle
It's a little known fact that "Ontological Argument" was in fact a much loved part of that medieval panel game "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Creed" which was billed as "the antidote to ecumenical councils, in which four Church Fathers are given silly things to do by the chairman, Gerbert of Aurillac". In the "Ontological Argument" round, each contestant in turn would say something gnomic like "God is that than which there is no greater" or "existence is more perfect than non-existence" until at some point one of them would say "And thus God exists!", at which point the audience would cheer and clap and the round would be over. Supposedly "variations" of the game existed, with unexplained extra rules such as reverse straddling or pillar saints being wild.
Another popular round was "Chain of Causation" (for some reason known as "Cheddar Gorge" in England). This would start with the chairman naming some everyday commonplace such as a turnip or the Black Death, then the first contestant would name something else supposed to have caused it, the second contestant would name something supposed to have caused the first contestant's cause, and so on, with the contestants trying to avoid naming anything which was near enough to a deity or Supreme Being to be deemed the First Cause. When one made that mistake (or the chairman got bored) a hooter would sound and the round was over. There was an especially fine version of it done in Rheims cathedral when the Blessed St Willy managed to say "chasuble" in a silly voice as his cause on three successive turns.
There was also "Limericks" where the chairman would supply an initial line such as "When St Antony was walking his pig" and the four contestants had to supply a line each to produce a limerick which was humorous but not heretical.
Other typical rounds were "One Gregorian Chant to the tune of another", "Letters to the Corinthians (expurgated version)" and pairs of contestants playing well known folk airs on shawm and sackbut, or singing alternate words of hymns. It usually ended with the names of late arrivals to a theological convocation.
At some point in most games the chairman would say "I'll be handing out penances, because penances mean pardons. What do penances mean?" and the audience would shout back "Pardons", at which point the chairman would mutter in an exasperated fashion about cloth-eared audiences.
The show was finally cancelled by the Puritans, who didn't hold with people enjoying themselves. Such a shame we have nothing like it today.
Also, without seeing the keys, how would I know if it is the long-backspace button, or the shorter button (which I hate!)?
Also, there is a definate tactile feel to pressing the keys; you can *tell* when the button is depressed. This feature is difficult to replicate.
This would really cause problems with respect to picking up the "board" and quickly working on it. Believe it or not, sight *is* important.
This device will never get off the ground, for my money.
... we can sell the Invisible Robot (TM).
That is all.
I do type in the air anyway when I'm bored. Just imagine how fast you could type if you practiced for a while..probably near 200wpm. And I thought my 140wpm was nice (sure pissed off my high school typing teacher).
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Does this mean I have to learn how to type correctly? I have somewhat mastered the "index finger" typing style.
"Mummy, what is that man doing?"
"Don't worry, dear. There are some odd people in the world. If all he is doing is typing on his knees, you needn't worry"
Wouldn't this be really bad on the fingers, since there's nothing for them to "bounce" off after each keypress?
...picture this - you're sitting in the boardroom, your boss to your left side, and the prospective multi-million dollar client across the table from you, and you're taking notes on your palm pilot...
PECKING AWAY AT YOUR INVISIBLE KEYBOARD.
And you thought the Sega Activator made you look stupid.
Artificial intelligence? A language processor? "Appropriate" keystrokes or mouse movements? This sounds like a fancy way of saying "it guesses a lot".
What happens if someone throws a pencil through the keyboard's on/off zone?
Smells very strongly of Vapor.... No details, and bogus claims of "Artificial Intelligence".
We can't do AI on big-ass supercomputers, you expect me to believe these little wristpade have AI in them?
I'll believe it when I see a product on the shelf.
The amount of typing mistakes will probably go up 10 fold with this thing, since there is no visible keyboard.
just like you can't tell whether someone's talking on a phone, or just to their own personal daemons in the street these days .... pretty soon on the bus you wont be able to tell whether they guy next to you is working .... or having a good time
Great... if you can FULLY touch-type. What about the other 99.995% of us that can't?
Sure, I can type 80wpm without looking at the keyboard... until I need to use some weird character that I don't use 400 times a day...
I guess you could roll out a printed keyboard to use if you had to... I can just see someone carring around a dirty napkin with a keyboard scrawled on it now... q:]
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Clockless chips, boardless keyboards???? What is this world coming too??? Could a slashless dot be next?
This story does have a Python foot somewhere right?
Did Homer Simpson invent this thing?
So I just type where the keys would be if there was an actual keyboard under my fingers? Say I don't really know the layout of keyboard very well... would I carry a thin piece of cardboard?
Is there a guitar module?
I am still lokking for that foot. Where's that confounded foot?
This
If only my virtual girlfriend would let me buy one...
Sensors in the units measure the finger movements and artificial intelligence and a language processor determine appropriate keystrokes or mouse movements. What kind of AI? If I type in my bosses name on the virtual keyboard, will it display "Brain Damaged Lazy Bastard"?
It seems a little weird. I mean it could be great technology, but there's just a sense of comfort in pressing shift-/ to get the ?. I like to press the keys and feel that I've pressed correctly. That instantaneous feedback helps me type efficiently. Without that physical feedback I think it would much more difficult.
~ now you know
Of course, this isn't anywhere as cool as the in-desk LED-based keyboard used to control MCP in Tron, but it's cool none the less.
That's kind of necessary for fast typers who use all their 10 fingers to type.
Complete specs would be interresting though, as a picture doesn't prove anything.
Another step better: Instead of something in the palm of your hand, use small transmitters glued to each of your fingernails, so you can quickly switch back and forth between typing and doing something else.
Some people might not want their computers to know where their fingers have been...
It always bugged me that on Next Generation keyboards/control panels were nearly always completely flat.
Friends and I have always thought something like this would be nifty---something like a virtual keyboard you could type in the air---although when I saw this announcement I wondered if it would actually be as practical from an HCI standpoint. After all, there's no real tactile feedback to tell you if you've hit the right "key," as far as I can tell. This sort of feedback is important, moreso than visual feedback (since unless you can't touchtype, you don't need to see the keyboard: try typing in the dark), especially to avert Repetitive Stress Injury.
On the other hand, just to test the concept, I tried "typing" on a flat surface, and it seemed fairly intuitive. This is probably better in this respace than an "air keyboard", since you at least feel the contact of the desk. (Assuming you can't type in the air with this product, although there doesn't seem to be a reason why not, they say "any flat surface".) Now what would be nifty is a roll-up guide you could "type" on to get both visual feedback and a soft touch. This would solve hunting and pecking problems, too. :-)
I'd really love to have one of these, since they seem to solve most portability problems, and since it seems you can tweak the virtual keyboard's size (layout, etc.), it'd make the ultimate evolution in keyboards. (No more need for a "flex" keyboard, just mold a surface...)
Nifty.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
if we spill coffee/soda or some sort of beverage on our hand/invisible kbd/table will we still freak out?
I can see it now..."AAAAaaaa...oh, wait, nevermind".
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
For those of you living in the Seattle area, you may want to contact The Paramount as their website blocks access from non-IE browsers. I tried to connect to theparamount.com and got this message:
The STG [Seattle Theatre Group, parent company of The Paramount and The Moore Theatre -me] website works with Netscape version 4.0 and 6.01 and Internet Exlorer [sic] versions 4.0 and 5.0. Please upgrade your web browser and come back to enjoy our website. Thank you!
I was using Moz0.9.5 under Linux. I tried Netscape 4.77 and got the same message. When I tried Konqueror with the identifier string changed to "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)", it worked fine.
I sent an email to webmaster@theparamount.com and to isen@axisweb.com (Axis is their web design company, 'isen' is Axis' Director of Operations).
Please send email to them if you care.
And how long after COMDEX will it be until it's not vapourware?
"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Tolkien
...But the web site seemed a bit slim on the details. How exactly does it work? Does it look at where your fingers are? I about 40 wpm with my two fingered approach, and I'd hate to have to learn to type for something like this. I have a Fujitsu Stylistic 3500 and this would be an attractive addition if it actually worked.
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
Archfeld sent a strange piece of technology called the Senseboard which is a portable keyboard, except that there's really not any keys (Archfield used Federal Express to get it to the Slashdot editors overnight? Or did he submit an article about it? Oh, and this is a run-on sentance.). Or a board (Verb?). And it can communicate via RF for all your strange wearable applications (Really? The Virtual Board can communicate via RF in place of all my strange wearable applications?).
This is too easy.
^I habr onw, it id v3ry cppl. I an usinf it right noq! Bit I an mot a veru good tyoist. :-)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
No, no they can't.
Ok, I see a wee bit of a problem with this.
A virtual keyboard based on finger movement would have to rely on a software learning mechanism that tuned itself to your physical idiosyncracies. I mean, without a physical keyboard to hunt and peck on, the little finger of your left hand is going to move a different distance between the imaginary A and Q keys than your right index finger is going to move betwen the J and U keys. A sufficiently good learning mechanism would probably account for tuning itself to your hand movements continuously, so that your error rate would go down even as your typing patterns shifted over time. (Of course, this results in equipment with function profiles in software that make it unusable by anyone else.)
Or not.
More likely, you will be the part of the equation that conforms to the constraints of the software. You will have to learn how to be very consistent in your finger movements, without a physical keyboard to guide you. After a training period (just as you would do for voice recognition software), you would have to be quite consistent, even in different positions, desk heights, and times of day (tired or not). This screams "RSI" to me. Repetitive motion in a guided environment is one thing, but having to make precise repetitive motions in free air or against a flat object that provides no feedback would mightily increase the stress put on your fingers.
Thanks, but I already have a surgery scar on one wrist that makes people think I tried to off myself, I don't care to repeat the experience. I'll wait until the Senseboard software is well-reviewed and proven to be continuously adaptive. (Then I'll have an excuse for wearing funny gloves and dark glasses with a piece of wire hanging off them, while playing pocket pool on the bus: "Oh no, Miss, I have a proposal due this afternoon...")
Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
Cool. Looks like an invisible keyboard/brass knuckle combo!
The downside could be local gangstas see you "air typing" and mistake it for gang signs.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
...of having a virtual keyboard for a Palm handheld computer, if you can't hold the keyboard while you're using it?
Another cute idea, but I can't see it taking off. Either the popular folding keyboards or some modified Graffiti-ish entry system like Fitaly seem to work much more "handily."
Their Web site stated that they would be at Comdex. Has anyone here actually tried the product?
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
Well all of you complaining that you need the tactile feedback and the clicking noise generated by it.. well think about this.. its QUIET so that means you can use it during class ( if youre a student ) so you could have your palm and this and be able to take notes on your palm quietly and not bother anybody else ( granted you'll look a little silly and probably have a coupla more errors in your typing than usual ) but its a nice data input device that will be able to type anyplace.. Plane sound good? dont have enough room in your seat to type with a full sized keyboard so this will work quite nicely.. its also compact so its easy to lug around too..
So I dont think all this bitching is warranted, granted you're going to have to have a keyboard layout in your head to type accrately and get used to typing without visual cues.. and if this is all its supposed to be then it'll be a very cool and useful thing..
What if I need to grab a drink? What if I briefly wave my hands around? What if I scratch my head because I don't know what to type next?
I'm not sure that the language recognition and "artificial intelligence" they proclaim this thing has would make it comfortably usable, even for short periods of time. Too many little inconveniences, and things you'd have to stop doing while having a keyboard permanently attached to your hands.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
Based on the form-factor of this device, it intuits the positions of your fingers by feeling your tendons. And pardon? Hello? Thumbs?
Sorry, but it's either a hoax or a strange new form of chording keyboard.
-dwd-
Seems to me that lack of seeing the keys could be solved simply by carrying around a piece of paper or something with the keys. Or something stronger that can be folded up.
Or something even possibly connected to the bottom of these things with each half of a keyboard.. talk about ergonomic, you could type in any hand position you want. and with a small head mounted display, Itd be superdope.
Yes the cost will be high at first but how high? A lot of people will be intrested in this right away and a few have to get sold so the technology gets cheaper right?
Vote early. Vote often. Vote CowboyNeal.
It's got to be good if it incorporates artificial intelligence!!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
nice job slashbot
I hear fear on the board..
People afraid to look silly when communicating with thier electronics.
If you pick one of these up, you are probably pretty damn geeky anyway.. people probably already laugh at you.
Who cares what they think. Make it good and I'll use it. Damn the social repercusions.
The product talks about the idea, which sounds fine. But the 'key strokes' need to be sensed correctly at a very very very high rate and the device needs to be implemented in a cheap way. Otherwise it is dead!
This is something I've been waiting for, for a long time.
;)), but maybe noise or visual feedback would be enough...
I've been thinking about ways to reduce the footprint of a laptop while retaining efficient input. One idea I had was similar to this -- when your hands approached the screen, an on-screen keyboard would appear that you could type on. You wouldn't have any touch feedback (electric shocks?
Those laser displays that project directly onto your retina would be cool too. Imagine this combined with a device that actually projected the keyboard (with live feedback) onto whatever surface you were using to type on...
If they had a nice durable webpad with either of these kinds of input, I'd be very happy!
:)
"No honey, I'm NOT! I'm just checking my email under the covers"...
Senseboard + MIDI = Real air guitar
In the voices of Bill and Ted: "Excellent".
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
next time I spill coke in my keyboard, it'll still work...and I'll never have to take the keys off my keyboard to clean out that strange goop that seems to collect between the keys again...
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Wouldn't really accurate voice recognition software make this sort of thing obsolete?
Are you an engineer too?
No, I'm a moron. Common mistake.
-some Dilbert comic strip on similar devices
They can have my old monster IBM clicky keyboard when they pry it from my cold dead fingers, besides you can't bludgeon co-workers to death with this thing.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
"The Emperor's New Clothes"
by Hans Christian Andersen
"What a marvelous technological advance!"
"What an engineering coup de grace!"
Doesn't anyone see what these Senseboard Technologies AB guys are doing to us?
Duh!
;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Of course we all realize that this doesn't work for us that use the accelerated-hunt-and-peck method. I remember the "home row" vaguely and of course it seems like it would be faster, but hey, you can't contain these fingers in any "home row"! They were born to roam free about the keyboard!
Seriously, how many people on Slashdot use the home row method that would actually work for this thing? It'd be a good poll, that's for sure. Or would the "Artifical Intelligence" be able to figure out which keys I am pressing no matter what style I use..?
This is definitely a Cool Thing, but it has a long way to go before people start using them (especially for coding, I would think....How hard is it going to be to hit the right direction of curly brace each time??)
Not being able to see the keyboard, ever, is going to make typing difficult. I assume when you 'initiate' it, it creates a keyboard based on where your hands are at that precise moment, so what if you shift slightly, you can't reorient yourself to the keyboard because you can't see it. Regardless, it's an amazing technology, in my opinion, and there are a few ways to overcome the problem.
First of all, just carry around a piece of paper with a keyboard on it, and just have the key zones correspond to the printed keyboard. You could carry around a thin, dead-tree keyboard in a pocket easily.
The far more elegant solution would be to use it with a wearable display that created a keyboard in your field of view at the appropriate place. Of course, that would require a camera, and some fairly sophisticated visual processing, but it could be done.
It still doesn't seem to solve the problems of tendonitis and carpal tunnel. People won't necessarily type with better hand on a table than on a keyboard. My bets for the keyboard of the future will be placed on a concept which eliminates the typing motion completely, or at least drastically reduces it. It's a great concept, but it solves a problem of convenience and not the major reason keyboards will one day become extinct.
What's in a Sig?
The mind boggles!
Edith Keeler Must Die
The artificial inteligence feature sounds a little sketchy to me. I wonder how accurate it will be.
Newton Guest Stars on the Simpson
Sig goes here
I guess I'm just not as attached to the aural and tactile features of my keyboard as you guys are.
This sounds like a great device, and I want one already... The only problem is it doesn't really look like it exists. Their contact page is an error, and you can't order one anywhere. Additionally, there's no video of a working model on there. Maybe this is someone's PR homework?
If you want to re-define your keyboard to be basketball shaped, have at it. There is some potential for great ergonomic improvements here.
Also, think of the potential for virtual instruments, art, the possibilities are endless.
Given all this, I hope they leave the interface open, so everyone can contribute.
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
There goes my sarcastic "Oh yeah right just wait while I note down that little nugget of wisdom" *taps in the air* line :(
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This might be really cool for portable applications. Imagine how much thinner a laptop could be if there didn't need to be a keyboard. (Or a mouse for that matter--let's say they put a piece of plastic that doesn't get dirty against the display, and make that into a touch-screen. People like me would rarely use that anyway (mice suck, IMO).) Then get rid of the keyboard, making the laptop about 1/4 to 1/2 inches thinner. That would be totally awesome. Hey, why not get rid of the power button and put something like what the Apple Cube or whatever it was called--there was no button, just a place where you touch the case and the computer would turn on or off. There was even a light that gets brighter when your finger comes close to the thing. Maybe the "buttons" could be silk-screened onto a flat surface on the computer and all have lights behind them that get brighter as your finger gets closer. That would be like something out of Star Trek. And there would be far less mechanical components in the laptop, making it last longer. Hey, why not get rid of the mechanical hard drive and put a solid-state drive in there. Currently, such a drive will read at extremely high speeds (much faster than any mechanical drive) and write at speeds about as fast as a mechanical drive. (I read that in two or three months' ago Circuit Cellar, I think.) Each "page" on these drives wears out after 10,000 to 1 million writes, but normal hard drives wear out after a while too. The rule is the same: back up your data. Besides, some of the better drives out there will automatically distribute the write load around on the drive so that it will last longer and stuff. Well, back to the keyboard thing. Oh, I was talking about removing mechanical components. Imagine if you could take almost all mechanical components out of the laptop. (The only things I can think of that need to remain mechanical are the CD-ROM and floppy drives. And the speakers, perhaps, I guess those are mechanical.) So you'd end up with an ultra-quiet, ultra-light (and ultra-futuristic-cool) laptop that will probably last longer than what is currently used today. Oh well.
I saw the virtual keyboard on the comdex floor. It sounds like a great concept, but did not appear to function with a high degree of speed and accuracy. THe basic concept is interesting -- using neural networks to correlate the electrical signals from muscle movements with corresponding strokes on a keyboard, but more work needs to be done on the algorithms. The 2-man team behind the board is hoping to develop a product by march that could be used by anyone without training. But in the demo, only one person on the development team was able to use the keyboard, which seems to indicate that it will be more difficult to create a system that will work for a large population of users without training. That said it is an interesting concept that needs more work, and will probably require each user to train the keyboard for their movements, much like people do with continuous speech recognition programs today.
Hey, now I can play air guitar and have it control a MIDI instrument!
Ok, I am not a touch typist, but I'll give this a shot.
[plugs in virtual keyboard]
Qokw. rthsi isd xc00; IK KUV SD'Adeh@ jooiw kne,l klweok; osoi j ihkwe isdkl oidkl asjn trhs>? Nnkle.
Hmm. doesn't work too well. I'll go back to my old way.
[loads up speech recognition program]
Their, that setter. Eye ill just stack with speech recognition. It's just work batter. New paragraph. New paragraph. NEW PARAGRAPH!
I hate technology.
SIGFEH
You're getting pedantic. "Artificial intelligence" doesn't mean a thinking computer, despite what "singularity" believers may say; it means a computer doing something which seems intelligent. The baddies in any computer game you care to mention are controlled by what most people would term "artificial intelligence".
What they mean here is that the wrist-pads work out which keys you're "pressing". They choose to call this AI, partly for the buzzword value, partly because that's simply what it is - as the word is generally used.
Er, would the moderator care to point out the insight in the parent? (HIBT?)
This invisible keyboard will go perfect with my 'invisible bug fixes' from microsoft!
Have you ever sat in a class where someone's drumming their fingers constantly on their desk? Believe me, it's more distracting than using a good old-fashioned pen...
sorta like the virtual slashdot database...
As for the noise factor of keyboard clatter, I have a 2-lbs sub-notebook that is nearly silent. The sound of the air filtering system in most lecture halls or boardrooms is much louder.
If people want a SMALL keyboard that is pretty quite, they should instead try a chording "keyboard" like the Twiddler. It's quite, small, unobtrusive and it is easy to learn how to use it with a training program.
I spent all of those years as Anonymous Coward and all I got was this lousy number (204976).
I'm sure that everyone who reads /. knows someone who has or has had carpal tunnel syndrome. With this, you could literally type with your hands anywhere, so it should be relatively easy to find an ergonomic position.
In fact, couple this new input method with a dvorak keyboard, and you'd be rocking. They could even throw in a few additional chordal "sequences" to really get some additional functionality out of it. This is some neat stuff from a user-input side. Free your mind, folks!
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
www.handykey.com
cheaper, better, easier, has mouse too.
Oh and two important things....
No drivers required(makes it 100% linux compatable)
and isn't vaporware.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Isn't this an obvious hoax.
There is no way the image shown can tell when I press a key, or indeed where my fingers are with any degree of accuracy.
I spent two years playing with human-computer interfaces and quickly came to the conclusion that short of something physical to 'press' then users wouldn't know where keys where, and sensors (particularly placed where the 'knucklebands' shows are) wouldn't know with any degree of accuracy where my fingers were.
The lack of an AVI or any kind of press review just adds to my scepticism.
*r
--- My dad's political betting
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of virtual keyboards...
someone had to say it...
Reading through at +3, I see that most of the respondents have a pretty negative attitude towards this device. If it's real, then, wow...I mean, this is the sort of thing that webpads and the like need. Sure, a stylus is nice for most things, but if you need to write more than a little bit, you need a keyboard.
:)
What's more, I think, is that one of the big size-limiting factors of making laptops much smaller than they are is the need for a keyboard. Imagine if you had a webpad style laptop that had a built-in mechanism for propping it up, and you'd just strap on the virtual keyboard doohickeys and away you'd go. By losing the keyboard, laptops could be almost half the size and a little bit lighter (admittedly, laptop keyboards don't weigh much, if you've ever taken a laptop apart, the keyboard weighs just a few ounces).
Also, I'd like to point out that when stuff like the "Smart Dust" project gets posted, people rave about how this would make for a great virtual keyboard, but when this shows up, most of the responses are along the lines of "well, even if it is real, it would suck." What the heck?
Furthermore, to all those people complaining about how they can't touch type and therefore it would be useless: maybe you should take a proper typing class or get a copy of tuxtype or mavis beacon or something. Touch typing is a valuable skill. At the very least it'll improve your ability to use vi/emacs/whatever.
How about support for a normal desktop box?, It odesnt mention anything abou that uh?. Would be nice to stop the keyboard noise while other ppl in my house are sleeping and im coding at 3:30am.
[alk]
Ignore parent's comment. I didn't know that a website about air guitars is the same as the goatse man.
After a bit of searching, I found it-- the exact concept exists in _Einstein's Bridge_, by John Cramer-- came out in 1997.
Here's the bit that discusses the idea:
Thought it was a facinating idea when I first read it-- seems fairly useless without the "magic glasses"...
"Sensors in the units measure the finger movements and artificial intelligence and a..."
Hey! I've seen the Matrix. It's only a matter of time before that AI turns on me and soon I'm punching my mother in the face. No thank you, AI Virtual Keyboard.
---------
Sometimes there's no other way to win, except by falling.
it would be funny...
Also it said MouseInput on the web page, my dreams of having Quake on a PDA will finally relized.
Insightful but Overrated Troll
..is teaching people to type instead of pecking at the keys
"Shut up brain or ill stab you with a Q-tip" Homer Simpson
I don't work for them, nor do I own a stake in the company
But I do like their idea better. What I hate about HalfKeyboard is that you have to buy one for the desktop, one for the PDA ( and if you have Palm V and VII, you need to get two keyboards). Otherwise, it's a better solution even for those who need any kind of feedback from the keyboard or to look at the keys.
has anyone checked out there both at comdex that is going on right now.....
Actually, it was an idea that my housemate and I dreamed up when we were thinking about realistic ways to interface with a wearable computer when using a HMD. We figured that having a virtual keyboard would be nice except for the problem of not being able to see keys, so the gloves/sensors would track the hands vertically/horizontally and display a pair of virtual hands floating over a virtual keyboard in your virtual reality head display. Pheyw. You would have to select a standard position to keep your hands in, but that probably would be a good idea, for comfort's sake. I don't know if the above-mentioned product does that or not, but it would be cool if something did. Personally we weren't thinking too seriously, we just thought it would be a gas to see modern businessmen standing on streetcorners typing on invisible keyboards. Har Har.
Isn't the product name a misnomer?
;-)
I'm thinking more along the lines of "Sans-board"
This subject touches on something that I saw at a local restaurant the other night. As my wife and I sat and ate the wait station was just behind us. Hanging on the wall at about average human eye height were two touch screens. One touch screen managed clock in and the other tables and orders (from what I could see). Throughout the course of the evening we saw waiters and waitresses wander by the station (had a prominent SQUIRREL logo on the display) and interact with the touch sensitive screens. The interesting part to see is how adept they were at navigating with either a pencil or their finger.
Personally I own and have used an ePods webpad for about a year now. It's not the top of technology and so the screens can be a little slow and response to commands lags. The one thing I have found though is that repetitive tasks are a breeze because I know exactly where the button is going to be before it shows up on the screen. This allows me to quickly touch through a series of commands without really needing to wait on the display to refresh. I thought that it would be skill only a tech head would pick up on. I was wrong.
Watching the wait staff that night I noticed about 6 of them, some taller and some shorter than the average height the screen was set to, breeze through screens just like I did. One very impressive girl spoke to another waiter while punching in her information. Most transactions were done and the wait staffer had walked away before the screens could go all the way through. That night I only saw one guy fumble on the screen and have to back step to hit the correct button.
My point is that there are all of these people here on the site bemoaning the fact that they learned to type by touch, and how do I remember where the special keys are, and what happens if I scratch my ass, and all of the other bullshit scenarios for why this tech will not work. I say it will work, I've seen similar things working already, I've used something similar myself. I also say it won't be the ULTIMATE solution. Just like QWERTY isn't to everyones taste and some people still have this bad habbit of liking Windows. Voice recognition is great but it's obtrusive in a meeting and non-functional in loud environments, Graffiti makes you relearn writing (shouldn't have to do), gestures are great but limited in use, and mind reading is still a ways away. So there are going to be times when voice is usable, and handwriting recognition is a good option, and times when a "virtual keyboard" is going to be much more than adequate.
Without the pioneering consumer the pioneering product will never be
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
a virtual mouse is a no-no...I imagine like an optical mouse you can't do a flic-shot in Quake3.
Virtual joy stick...humm, perhaps with interactive porn that is where their hand would be anyway...(ahem, uhhh, so I've heard)...and the "twist action"....oye.
Reminds me of a friend of mine:
"Well, my wife gave me a Thrustmaster for my birthday. It is a really stiff stick. (pause)
But what would you expect from a company called Thrustmaster!.
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
This is a big first step toward getting that. Just as big a step as those stories about nanotechnological breakthroughs that will make processors faster in the future are for processors.
Well thats nifty and all, but it would be hard to kill someone with one of these. They just don't make things like they used to.
nuf said.
Nothing new. A long time ago, I was standing in line at a supermarket, discussing the end game of Adventure with a friend. I forget the details, something about a bomb and an oyster. Got some interesting looks. Nowadays, of course, people would have known we were talking about a computer game, even if they didn't know which one. But back then... Got some weird looks.
One of these (one side and mouse, or both, using the second "like" a mouse) could be a pretty good controller for games. Admittedly Tribes2 would have issues, as would games that use a lot of keys (well, unless you can touch type), but for those FPS's that require not too many keys, it could be a lot more comfortable than a Claw, the MS Strategic Commander, etc. You could possibly run Tribes2 with a modified keymapping, and/or in combo with a traditional keyboard.
It'd be interesting to see how fast they react to movement, and how good a response they could give. If they work off muscle movements, they could also be a boon for disabled people.
BTW: Re: How would it know when you are typing or not. It probably would only work when the pads have pressure applied to them, in the classic "wrists down" approach for touch typing. All those hunt and peck typists would have problems though. (Admittedly it'd be a great way to kill your bosses productivity!)
heh, makes you think about those caulking guns they use to dispense the guacamole and sour cream...
it would be a good idea for it to have a learning ability (like voice rec software). you put them on and hook them up the the computer, then type on your regular keyboard for a few days and let the little guys figure things out.
like it or not, this is a great troll. by the way, all trolls suck my dead father's cock you bitches. you may now suck my fleshy anus.
I dunno about you, but I haven't lost much by betting that technology development ventures are usually lazy, sloppy, and cheap. Experience reinforces that view on a very regular basis. MAYBE they thought up something revolutionary, and I'd love to see it if they did. But it would be foolish to assume that this virtual keyboard (or any other whiz-bang doodad) is revolutionary.
Analyzing electrical impulses in my hand muscles? Riiight. Do you have any clue about the variability that would be involved in producing usable positional data and predicting intended movement? Would it work if I was sweaty? Agitated? Please. It'd be far easier to go with mechanical position measurement, and do the rest in software. Without knowing more about the device, the simplest answer would be a good bet. (Thank you, Occam.) As I said before, if they've done a good job of writing continually-adaptive algorithms, then I might be interested. But I won't hold my breath.
Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
Looking like new version of that NES Powerglove, this device looks well crap. The whole half-baked idea of wireless/touchless input device is not new at all. Cant help but think the inventor took clues from 80's "Icon" Jean-Michel Jarre who played a stringless laser harp. He was pretentious prat if ever I saw one.....
Unbelievable what people will try to sell....
Po
http://www.fu-fme.com/
Could you be any more of a wanker?
>I spent two years playing with human-computer interfaces
I didn't and I still thought this was an obvious hoax. I mean, let's be honest here. There's a photo of a guy with wrist straps and a fifty-word blurb indicating that the straps perform some sort of magic.
What makes me sad is that the best score is 2 of anyone calling this a hoax. That leads me to believe that in the 12 hours since the original posting, not a single mod point was devoted to the TRUTH.
Go slashdot! Liberate me from marketroid tyranny!
(I assume you have a roommate or something in which other, non-computer-literate person(s) are around your computer while you are not.)
Do this, install Festival on your machine. Later, ssh in, and have it start saying stuff from 2001. This works even better if you have a microphone and recording an IceCast stream so you can have a conversation.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Hey, if Kintaro learned how to use a computer with a paper keyboard, I bet you could too!
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Wiggum: Oh, yeah, right. I'll just type it up on my invisible typewriter! Dum de dum...
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Come on guys, do you really expect this thing to work? And did you check out the rest of their website? It's made in about one hour, just to make it to Slashdot. Tsss...
How am I going to hunt and peck with this contraption?
this is definitly a cool new toy.. that is.. if it works.. i would buy it, and use it every day.
With keyboards like this, how would you be able to whack your monitor with it in frustration? I mean, your hands offer increased dexterity and precision, of course, but there's nothing like bashing your monitor with a nice large keyboard.
So now all we need is hologram interfaces and it'll be like final fantasy!
when do we get the green boingy stuff you can jump from planes onto?
... Vapourware! I just can't see people actively using that... it's just too hollywood-movie-ish. Sure it's cool, but how many people can actually type properly without looking for keys?... (yeah, i can...:))
It's just Crap.
Hmmmmmm.
free online diet tracking.
Whatever happened to the keyboard on a glove? I don't remember the last time I saw it (At least 3 years ago), but it seemed like a cool idea at the time. Better than this at least.
The principle was that you wear a special glove with sensors or buttons in the fingers, and there's a special hand motion for each character. The preliminary model let someone get up to about 200 wpm or so.
It seems good, but I'm not sure why it folded...maybe someone else knows?
Your village called: Their idiot is missing.
In the picture, there is a guy sitting with his hands in front of a PDA. My question is this: how do you keep your fingers on the "home row" ? How do you even tell where it is? Looks to me like I'd be typing like this:
S Ssf RCscmprl zOg hr Srth Srinhj Adijr
You ever sat down and started typing away furiously on your keyboard only to look up a few seconds later and find that your fingers had shifted to the left by a key?
I just don't see this as being practical.
Now... if you combine this with some VR display (like the computers in "Final Fantasy: Spirits Within") that displays a 'virtual keyboard' underneath your fingers --- maybe it could work.
Otherwise, I would rather spend my money perfecting speech-recognition because this thing isn't going to go very far.
Sheesh...this is one of the coolest input devices to appear in a LONG time. Look at what's on your desk right now: CRT, windowing GUI, keyboard, mouse, all tied together by a spaghetti of cables...practically unchanged for the last FOURTY YEARS! Awwww, you'll lack a little tactile feedback - wah. This is just a half-step forward (still a durn QWERTY keyboard) and you so-called "computer geeks" are whiny and fearful of the change. HMDs, datagloves, speech I/O, and other forward-moving tech, all merely niche fringe devices (only the PDA has moved us foward) lost to people glued to their CRTs. How disappointing...
Gimmie one of these nifty units ASAP! When's it out? Price? Need beta testers?
Let's move technology FORWARD, and not just refine nearly antique technologies!
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Ho hum...
:o/
;o)
Wonder if it's possible to configure it to ignore me tapping my fingers.
Maybe something that will ignore tappings at the same bpm as the playing mp3.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
If they don't release a special version for cartoon characters (three fingers and a thumb), we'll never see it popularized in animation...
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
Great idea, but unless you're aiming for the ruggedized computer market, there's no incentive to make a laptop with a lifetime greater than the time it will take for the model to become obsolescent. Which, for a PC, seems to be only two or three years, depending on your application of it.
I can see the fnords!
When is someone going to invent a device that optically scans a DVD/CD? It theoretically sounds easy enough: map the spiral, scan it, unwrap it, look at the bits, and decode them.
Imagine the day when computers have no moving parts at all.
I d/led the Mac demo, and had an odd time. My keyboard is mapped to the Dvorak layout. When I typed the 'left' half of the keyboard, it was ordinary Dvorak. When I typed the 'right' half of the keyboard, it was QWERTY. That eliminates such useful letters as C, R, N, S, T, and L.
...so much for winning at Wheel of Fortune.
Their website mumbles "patent pending" a few times. Assuming that they end up with similar competitors, will they be apprehensive about releasing open source drivers? Will they attempt to sue open source coders for hacking their patent via the DMCA?
Part of me still thinks this is a DieCorp-esque prank product.
What about those of us (ie: all of us ;) who don't have perfect typing habits? For example, I rarely use my right pinky finger for anything. Would this device pick up on my ring finger doing the pinky's work?
-kidlinux.
First Look: Senseboard Virtual Keyboard
-Kraft
Live and let live
Hmmm... Combine a paper looking keyboard(as long as you dont feel like its a zx81 keyboard), a paper computer(damn cant remember the URL but they are attempting to develop processors using a sillicon based ink) and add a OLED display... Whoa... Paper computer...
Hmm... I wonder how far this can go...