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Spherical Keyboards?
Jesse Middleton asks: "I was wondering if anyone knew of an ergonomic keyboard that is a ball shape? Someone told me about it, but I can't seem to find it. I would really be interested in it. In otherwords, it is shaped like a ball and you sit it on your desk and elevate your hands and type sideways. Any help would be appreciated!"
This?
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Not spherical, but you type sideways.
Whoever said this one was gonna be a hard one to google away was right.
However, you might try http://www.keyalt.com/kkeybrdp.htm for a fairly complete selection of ergonomic keyboards and related hardware.
You could also check out the Keyboard Google Directory Entry.
I did find a link to an old ball shaped typewriter(from a google link). While there doesn't seem to be a currently available product, this idea and one of those flexible rubber keyboards might be a good starting point.
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Before I start, I'm not sure you want a true sphere. It seems that such a design would make you move your fingers a very large distance to hit the proper key, and when pushing down, would get a narrow hole, easy to accidently push another key. This would also necessitate large gaps between keys, or else the keys would ram into each other when pressed (unless flexible keys or some wildly different approach was taken).
:-) That being said, lets see what I can do for you.
It seems like a better idea would be making the *interior* of the ball be the keyboard, have a hole for your hands, and possibly make the thing transparent. It'd minimize hand movement -- your hands stay in one place, and the keyboard spreads out from that point. Hell, heat the sphere and you can avoid those cold "typing fingers" in the winter.
First, you could use this, this, or this slid at such an angle that the keyboard approximates the sides of a sphere.
Second, you could use one of the many keyboards that look like this and wrap it around a spherical object.
Third, if you want something with serious hack value, modify a idea like this to work from the angle needed to be typing on a curved surface.
May we never see th
Offtopic: The first link goes to Bill Buxton's web site. He's the chief scientist for Alias|Wavefront. Might be some interesting reading there if you're into 3D.
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http://www.worklink.net/products/kinesis.html
I don't know about the ball shaped keyboard you are looking for, but in my personal experience the best keyboard in the world is the Kinesis Contour.
It has depth setup keys (indented in a Sphere shape), non-angled keypaths, hardware based key-mappings, better placement of important keys, easy way to flip access to number keys with you right hand, and an array of other features.
It takes about two weeks to get used to it (with real practice), but once you get used to it, you will ensure one is always with you. It totally elminates pain from typing and makes it enjoyable once again for even people that have had bad wrist pain.
Somewhat expensive, but well worth it:
http://www.comfortkeyboard.com
It's extraordinarilly configurable and I think you can get it to a state close to what you'd expect of a spherical keyboard.
I have mine with left and right halves widely separated, tented at very steep angles (about 80-degrees), with a kensington track ball sitting in the middle. The keyboard firmware isn't perfect, but works well enough. The trackball stands up to all manner of neglect and abuse.
I've also found it handy to mount a couple of button boxes around the keyboard (I have around 200 keys in easy reach -- roughly half bound to my favorite emacs commands) but my button box manufacturer has been a twit and their firmware is annoyingly flakey, so I don't have a specific recommendation here.