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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!"
It seems to my that your arms would get very tired if you used one of these for a long time, considering there is essentially nothing to rest your arms upon. Holding arms in the air for a few hours while manipulating fingers at >60WPM would get very old very fast.
The requirement of this keyboard is that it be shaped like...a...ball?
Well guys, you asked for an Ask Slashdot that couldn't be solved by a google.com search. Be careful what you wish for...
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This?
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Not spherical, but you type sideways.
How about this rather unique solution? No tired arms here!
=Smidge=
Knowledge Adventure presents a whole new concept to the Baby Software world with JumpStart Baby with Baby Ball. The ball is big and sits on the desk in front of your child. Rather than clicking a mouse or striking a key on the keyboard baby pushes down on the oversized ball and gets the same effect.
I had this image in my mind of my boss walking into my office, while I'm not just posting to Slashdot, but doing it moving a Teddy bear around by pressing on this big baby ball on my desk with a big, stupid smile on my face. It must be a good thing, after all a happy worker is a productive worker. Just think of my productivity increase as I make the bear run around the screen pecking out C code. Go Teddy go!
My boss has been telling me to get on the ball for awhile now...
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.