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!"

Comments

This?

[Anonymous Coward]

This?

Not spherical, but you type sideways. /.

I can come close

[0x0d0a]

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).

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. :-) That being said, lets see what I can do for you.

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.