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Review Of Upcoming Projection Keyboards
malpern writes "I've written a review of upcoming virtual keyboards based on published reports. There are pictures, descriptions, and details for each of the four major manufactures (Virtual Devices, Developer VKB, Canesta, and Senseboard Technologies)."
If the moment I turn one of these laser keyboards on my cat will go nuts?
before taking these things to market they should give out 1000 of them and get people to test em.
:(
i want to test one
Some of those toys were meant to be released last year, but I have not seen them available. I really could use the wireless/bluetooth one at the end, as my space I have available for my computers is being reduced by another human being born into the world.
Anyway my *icrosoft ergo keyboard is looking very tattered and worn out!
`find / -name "*your_base*" -exec chown us:us {} \;`
the feel of keyboards which is important too. I don't think this will pick up especially the senseboard ones (the rest atleast have a keyboard image). Type into thin air !! People around may take you for being psychotic or something. Plus I would really like someone to do this: "Now where is that Enter key?" heh heh heh.....
That'll never fly in school. Who wasn't getting in shit all the time for drumming on the desk eh?
Such keyboards would be great with PDAs and other portable devices.
But I suspect that using one constantly (such as for you desktop machine at work) would produce lots of pain and suffering. Banging your fingers on the probably hard solid no-give surface of a desk all day probably wouldn't be great fun. Stopping your fingers before they hit the desk would be a quick route to RSI land... I guess you could put somethign soft where your fingers will hit, but then why not just use a nice clickity-clackity keyboard...
On the plus side, it'd make those old games where you have to push two keys in quick succession over and over again (Summer Games for example) much easier.
On that note, did anyone else build a 'joystick' for the C64 out of 2 nails some wire and a screw driver, just so they could get really fast times in the 100 meter sprint on that game?
I'm just wondering if they'll address the issue of sore wrists and aching fingers anytime soon. Maybe you just need to project it onto a shaped pad and adjust the emitters/detectors to compensate for the new ergo shape.
I hope you don't actually have to touch the surface that it's being projected on. A couple weeks back somebody posted a link to a modified typewriter keyboard to use on a computer because his wife's fingers reacted badly to the jarring motion of using a touchtype keyboard. Imagine how jarring it would be to repeatedly slam your fingers against such a hard surface...
sig.
I have been waiting for something like this for a long time now. I have keyboard preferences that many people deem odd (Sun 3 keyboard, QWERTY layout, essentially), and this looks like the answer to my problem.
I also like that at least one of the devices will have RS232-C output. That will make connection to older devices a lot easier, and drivers easy to write.
Does anyone have any idea when these will hit the Canadian market? Sometimes we lag behind the US market, and other times we get it a week or two early.
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
You would develop some pretty nasty RSI issues if you used this a lot...but who's going to do that. I think the purpose of the technology is to allow you to bang out a quick (and irrelevent) SlashDot comment while on the move. This would be great on the train home from work for example. You could reply to all your email of the day in otherwise unused time - then spend the 30 minutes you normally take to email people with your family instead.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
The article seems to be a little dated. There's not publication date, but several references are almost a year old. Details are thin, but honest for a product that's yet to see the light of day.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
I'd like to see something like this where you could switch between keyboard layouts like QWERTY, Dvorak, Typematrix, Kinesis, etc...
sig.
hard surface!
display it on a pillow or any cushion.
The first would be the lack of tactile response. After all, your desktop or any other hard surface would become uncomfortable after just a few minutes IMHO.
The second would be the lack of any position designators - i.e. the 'f' and 'j' keys. Most 10 fingered typers probably don't even think about it anymore, but it's very easy to lose your place without them. I suspect this would become very annoying if taking notes in class during a lecture or in a business meeting.
As far as a good portable keyboard for a PDA, my money is on the new Stowaway XT. It's been getting really good reviews/previews.
Anyone been lucky enough to play around with one yet?
i.e. what happens when one finger taps a key that is in the shadow of another finger? The review doesn't mention this.
I seriously doubt anyone could use these at full-speed, because there is no tactile feelback! The whole point of touch-typing is to type by feel, not by reading the keys. Poking at the keys one at a time is possibly worse than handwriting recognition speeds, and vastly inferior to speech recognition. I pity the company that invested $20 million into this useless novelty item.
I'm rather sceptic about the usability of these things. First, there's no "feel" in it, you just tap the table. You cannot feel where the keys are. Second, I think there will be a lot of typos, because of the sensor. Third, fingers will be on the way, typing upper row letters/numbers you aren't able to see lower rows.
He hasn't used any of these, so it doesn't quite count as a review. Has anyone seen any of these devices work? So far I can't think of any actual hands-on reviews of them.
Still, I'm excited by this technology. Now someone needs to marry it up with a similarly sized projection screen and we can have a computer with a full-sized screen and full sized keyboard that you can fit into your palm.
a world in progress...
Looks like an innovative idea, but I like to have something tangible i can touch; i like to feel the key being depressed so that i know i typed it. i don't (can't) type perfectly, and i'm sure i sometimes press a key that would be obscured by the front of my hand.- pressing the space bar with my thumb, for example? i'm sure that would be out of view of the projector in front of me.
Maybe a good idea if you need to do lots of typing on a PDA, but who actually does? the screen's are too small to format anything anyway. PDAs are good for short notes but not inputing loads of text.
Thats my view anyway. not intended as a troll, i'm just not convinced.
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We used to use noisy typewriters.
Now it is the traditional keyboard's time to face replacement.
It'll take a whole generation, no doubt, of people who were raised up on projection keyboards, before it becomes accepted the way keyboards now are.
It's a radical new concept and we technocrats should at least have some kind of open mind about it.
Although there are nagging issues.. such as whether or not those keystrokes will be nore easily interfered with or intercepted...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
God, I have enough trouble trying to make sure I find all the keys OK after 10 years of working on computers... Could you imagine what happens if you need to glance at the keyboard every so often, and you happen to block the display with your hands??
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
If the technology senses finger location then the layout of the keyboard should be irrelevant, leaving the door open for the keyboard layout to be rearranged virtually. While this wouldn't be so practical for work (except for maybe switching keyboard nationality at the press of a button), how badass would that be for gaming?
Load up UT 2005 and your keyboard layout changes to put a ton of extra keys around your direction arrows. Instead of trying to remember that Ctrl+P+2 balances your shields in Tie Fighter, you have a large "balance shields" key wherever you want it. RTS games always have somewhat unintuitive keyboard setups because they have so many keys... well imagine a soft/bouncy surface onto which a different specialized, user mappable, user configurable keyboard was projected for EACH app/game. I don't know if we'll see this right away... but I sure as hell want too.
If the moment I turn one of these laser keyboards on my cat will go nuts?
I wonder if my kitty takes a nap on the desk with the keyboard on, will it make a neato image of all the keys on her back?
Talk about a great way to pick up a g33k girl.
"your kitty is *so* cuuute! Hey, is that Dvorak on her ass?"
I don't think this is gonna fly. While yes, it's a great idea, it also has a good amount of cons to it. First of all is the aethetics of it. The thing about normal (qwerty) keyboards is that you can modify angle, etc. But these are at minimum height.
Then there is the one which didn't even have a visualization. Then you'd have to worry about where the center of your keyboard is, etc.
THen there is the sight factor, how would people react so see a person typing on a projection?
Next is the fact that it HAS to have a surface, an advantage you don't need for fold-up keyboards or using the pen-on-screen approach.
What I think they should do is make them similar to DDR pads. Seriously, You make them small, they'll have plenty of room for keys, you can fold them up so you have portability. Then you can have just a thin foldup sheet of some sort of stiff material for support so you can use it on your lap while being on a subway or something like that.
Live life to the fullest. It's not that life is short, but that you are dead for so long.
I've used a rigid, zero-feedback keyboard (a TouchStream prototype) quite a lot.
For typing tasks like programming and writing articles, it starts off mildly annoying and rapidly becomes agonizingly horrible. However, I was very impressed by the potential for non-typing input, e.g. gestures, dragging the mouse pointer without having to move your hand off the keyboard.
I think these boards would be great for the pda/cellphone market but for heavy workstation use it's just terrible ergonomics -- specially when the perfect keyboard already exists! That's the Kinesis Contour for those trapped in the land of flat keyboards.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
If you're going to find a niche in market like this its got to be disrutive. And this is definitely disruptive.
On the Eco front, think of how much less plastic that won't end up in a landfill!
This scores on two fronts, as well as being, well, pretty damn cool! I'd love to be one of the first people using one of these on the train to work.
Its one damn thing before another. (Dick Bird 1999)
But many of us technochrats still dislike the feel of laptop keyboards because they don't respond quite "right". I suspect these new virtual keyboards will take quite a bit of getting used to and won't be adpoted very quickly.
Just a guess, of course.
As someone who has learnt to touch type pretty successfully, which makes a huge difference to the way I work, I can't see these things being any use to me at all. You need to feel the gaps between the keys to indicate where they are. Sure for the "hunt and peck" mob out there this is a nice gadget to play with, but for a techy on the move who can actually type its not going to be useful.
I'd prefer a tiny keyboard (I can touch type on a Nokia Communicator, its just about adjusting slightly) than one with no tactile feel.
I understand why this will be great for somepeople, but for for speed typists this isn't very useful. Now a tactile glove might work a treat, well two of them obviously.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
All these comments about drumming, touching hard or soft surfaces, typing in shadows or accounting for tactile feedback...
These projected, virtual keyboards have little to do with drumming, touching hard or soft surfaces, typing in shadows or accounting for tactile feedback...they have everything to do with motion, however.
The concept is really that simple...don't get lost in trying to overlay traditional ideas about traditional keyboards onto what is a new concept that must be tried out in person before giving an otherwise off-base opinion.
I can't think of a scheme that seems reliable.
I saw some of these a CEBIT last year and the projector is a few inches above the desk and angled down at about 45deg. Didn't get to try any though.
You've got to interrupt the beam of several letters just to "press" one key, so it must be pretty "smart" just to work that out.
I guess it can assume it's on a flat surface but if it doesn't know how fat your fingers are then it doesn't know when you've touched the table either.
Maybe there's a secondary scanner at table height that returns the x/y of anything that interrupts the beam?
If you set this on a mirror, will all your words come out backwards?
or even Qwerty for that matter could never fit on my cat's ass.
"Is that the tilda key on your cat's ass." is more accurate
This is just another solution looking a problem. Keyboard typing is about pressing buttons. Its been that way since the 1st typewriter. This is about simulating that since people know it but the finger suffer too much shock hitting a non spring loaded surface. It becomes a major issue to use this often.
Years ago when I had toys to play with that would do most of this, it became painful typeing on a bit of paper and detecting where the finger where. It just didn't work but looked like a good idea on paper and the sparc 1 could cope with the image processing needed. The major problem was people tend to drift if they don't have the physical feedback so you know where the key "centers" are. Modern keyboards suck with that compared with old 3270 keyboards which had an indent on J & F while the new ones tend to use some sort of raised edge. A projected keyboard won't have either.
A cheap $10 rubber keyboard will roll up and go anywhere and it doens't abuse the finger tips so I don't see these expensive things going anywhere people have a real need to type. The projection things are ok for "yes/no" and "Enter your Name" but not useful for much of anything else.
To:info@virtualdevices.net
From: Me
Subject: Vaporware
What's the deal, so you have something or not? Pictures of it actually projecting a keyboard would be nice. Somebody should tell your artist you can't see the cone of the laser in the air.
Forget that and sell your gravity defying PDA's and Cell phones that you have pictured at the bottom of the pdf.
I hope he's typing on his lap dear. Oh look, there's a policeman!
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
In TRON, Ed Dillinger (David Warner) had a large, black glass desk in his office. The keyboard was a glowing projection on the desk surface from inside the desk. It was very cool, but I had exactly the same thoughts about tactile feedback that many people are expressing here.
Peter.
Is can I get one in dvorak? :)
-1 (Troll) is antihammer
I Must say it's the first time i hear of this technology (and don't ask me where i been hiding up to now), and all i can say is "WAOW!". Yet I think there are two considerations: 1st- it's supposed to be used mainly with pda's and the such, now these solutions require a flat surface to be workable, hence a desk say, not that practical for several reasons. and lets forget about the usability of these devices in extreme conditions ( improper light intesity for example) 2nd- using an "untachable" keyboard would be impractical for me as it would force me to keep looking at it while typing (no more physical references).
-- Or So Tewfik Wrote. --
And I bet they'll find yet another place for the much-malinged backslash key!
2 keyboards- two totally different places for the backslash key- what gives?!?!
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
While this may be a arguably nice toy for people who have to search for every key, it seems to be quite a drawback for those who can type "properly".
I need the minuscle feedback when moving over the keys to have body memory kick so I can find the keys instinctively. When I type, I don't have to think where the key is, all done autonomously.
Try it with a piece of paper with a printed keyboard on it. Not a chance to type blindly (which I do all of the time), and you won't get up to any decent speed even with looking at the keys.
But thats exactly what I'd require from a "next generation" keyboard for PDAs and the like, if I want to enter text at a slow pace there are already a lot of viable alternatives.
When my desk gets covered in paper I wounld'nt have to dig my keyboard out. I could just keeping on working over the top of it.
Bah. Might be a bit tricky to use on the bus.
uh, oh.
/me quickly pulls the hand out of the pants.
OK, I admit it, I saw "Blue Streak" yesterday.
I would think that this makes it worse? I was under the impression that tapping your fingers on a hard surface was exactly what you should *not* do.
There was a previous article about a guy that hacked a typewriter to function as a keyboard for this very reason.
What the world needs more than virtual keyboards are virtual typists, you know...those folks that can spell out the entire words "you" and "are" and can do so in under five minutes without a typo.
My 11 year griped about it, but she's finally starting to see the sense in learning to type quickly and correctly and not sounding like a 15 year old boy on methamphetamines while doing so.
Reminds me of an old Dilbert cartoon:
Salesman: Try our FingerComputer 5000. It has a powerful AI, and implants under your fingernails so it can sense your typing. Of course, not everyone wants an intelligent computer knowing what they've been doing.
Voice from his finger: Dave, about last night...
What's this Submit thingy do?
"Forbidden, this page (http://www.alpern.org/weblog/stories/2003/01/09/p rojectionKeyboards.html) is categorized as: Sex. "
(according to Smartfilter)
Since when slashdot links to pr0n pages ?
Give me a TouchStream anyday. =) I don't want stupid red light, black with print is the way to go. Same effect, but no red light. I can see where these projection keyboards would be useful though, but I can see where they wouldn't be (work, school, home). Of course, on an airplane, travelling, etc, it'd be great. Just imagine a screen, and that's your laptop. Oops.
Still, it's good technology, even if not applied in the best sense here. Imagine your house is X10
controlled(sans the pop-ups, of course). You pull out one of these things with custom buttons you did on your PC. Hit the lights that you want on/off and the wireless transmitter sends it back to the server to do it. Or you could have these 'magic' buttons built into a painting or art(-wannabe) object, and access them anytime anywhere, but keep them out of place. (Yes, this example took the technology and not the specific use of the projection keyboards).
...virtual keyboard switches YOU!
At lot of the comments here seems to forget that these new types of keyboards aren't meant for replacing your good old trusted keyboard. As the article states it's a product for PDAs and other small devices.
The goal is to make something better than what we have today, i.e. Palm's Graffiti or T9-systems found on cell phones.
Personally I'm really looking forward to something like this, because I think it would open up a whole new world for my Pocket PC.
DU IST EIN FAILURE!
I can set it on my girlfriend's back, and type on her ass, allowing me to code AND fondle her at the same time.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
This sounds like one of those schemes for impressing ignorant suits or girls in a bar.
Not much good for anything else.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
I'm sick of all these smaller and smaller devices. They are ruining the user experience. I think I'm going to go pull out my first portable computer. FYI, if you visit the link, they have a ? next to the year. Mine was 1979.
http://www.askthevoid.com
Instead of trying to remember that Ctrl+P+2 balances your shields in Tie Fighter, you have a large "balance shields" key wherever you want it.
Some apps already have specialized keyboards available.
Of course, it would be cool to be able to get a keyboard for an app I use, or, even better, the app I'm writing.
I remember reading a while back in a Star Trek Next Generation tech book (Yup, geeky enough) that their 'keyboards' were something like this. It was a touch screen that 'morphed' depending on what you did.
Example: Worf wants to attack that pesky enemy of the week. Touchpad has 'Weapons, Shields, Runaway'. Pushes Weapons and the touchpad changes to show Phasers, Photo Torpedos, Modified Deflector Array. Pushes Phasers, comesup with a list of the phasers, etc.
A changing keyboard/touchpad is sort of a neat idea here....
Having converted to one of those split 'natural' keyboards (now I don't get carple-tunnel anymore) on both my home and work systems, and the fact that I touch type - and have difficulty keeping on my home keys *with* feedback, I find these virtual keyboards of limited usefulness.
Yeah, they might be good in limited applications - and probably more for the hunt and peck crowd, as someone else has mentioned. They are not for me.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Will an infinite number of sleeping kitties on an infinite number of virtual keyboards eventually produce the great works of Shakespeare?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Well, we've got nearly invisible bluetooth headsets, eyeglass displays, and now a keyboard that doesn't exist. Your chances of being mistaken for an well dressed, crazy homeless person are becoming greater by the day.
I had one of those joysticks for the C64 that was a long handle with the joystick part kind of floating inside of it. The sprint was done by holding it down and shaking the crap out of it.
:-}
Come to think of it, that probably was encouraging other "bad habbits"...
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I don't want a virtual projected keyboard - that will knacker my fingers.
What I DO want is a real keyboard with LCD keycaps. So that I can switch qwerty/dvorak/APL,
and have the symbols correspond to the layout!
It wouldn't have to be a color LCD, it could be one of those funny passive black/transparent ones that just lets the background show through!
The new trick would be to place a nice reflective surface down and they'll blind themselves when they go to look at the keys.
(Or if you're really mean you'd get a clear surface with tons of small angled mirrors below it to create a nice distorted reflection.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Well, it looks like somebody finally out-innovated Apple. Their latest PowerBook has keys that light up in the dark. Somebody took this one step further and got rid of the keys!
This idea sounds cool, sure, but it's completely fucking pointless.
The whole point of having a physical keyboard is that your fingers recieve physical feedback. Thats why keys are springloaded. Ever notice how many times your finger misses the target on a normal keyboard, and ends up whacking more than one key? Well, you can feel that when it happens. On a projection keyboard, you can't, which sucks ass, especially in applications where you dont recieve immediate feedback on-screen for what you're typing out (password dialogs, hotkey stuff, etc.)
Well anyway, if you don't agree with me, you're welcome to grab your CueCat, hop on your Segway, and go to work where your projection keyboard sits. Just be sure not to rest your hands on your desk at any time during your 8 hour shift, or let anything fall into the area where your keyboard is projected, like paper. Also, don't subconsciously tap your fingers on your desk out of boredom either. The results could be disisisisisisisisisisisisisisiasrtrtrtrterrrrrrrr
Summary: Projection keyboards solve a problem that never existed in the first case. Its a great example of an invention that causes more problems than it claims to solve.
Bowie J. Poag
This looks really neat, but I'm afraid it won't do me a lot of good; I'm close to useless without the bumps on the F and J keys.
He wrote about laser generated virtual Keyboards generated by a wrist watch sized computer in the novel "Homeworld" in 1980. Hope he got a patent.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
Personally I'd prefer something physical -- flexible rubber-surfaced keyboards you roll out or whatever. This sort of reminds me of the eBook's limitations. There are probably lots of hidden sides to having the tangible keyboard, little things you'd miss. People think a book is simple, but the eBook has some serious publishing chops behind it and it still can't get it quite right. Typing in air with little wrist things on your hands? That just isn't going to fly.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
If Freakazoid is anywhere around.
errera hunamum ets
I first imagined virtual keyboards around 1994. I tried building something from game gloves that could be had at the time but it was a joke. The projection keyboards are interesting but not sufficient since they depend on a flat surface. My vision of portable computing depends on a belt-mounted pack, bluetooth headphone for music and voice and (vitally) sound feedback from the virtual keyboard, heads-up vision, and keyboard gloves. The whole thing will be more compact than a small laptop, last for days with a recharge, and - yes - require expert touch typing, but that is a small price for being able to tap out your email and latest novel on your knees. :-)
I expect the first serious mass-market virtual keyboard will be seen in Europe and be used for SMS.
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Haven't got one but I drummed my fingers on my desk for two minutes pretending to type whilst looking through something else and after the two minutes my pads were beginning to hurt. More unpleasant than typing.
I can't believe the parent Mac fanboy post got modded up. How the hell is the powerbook keyboard sexy? Seriously, some of you guys need to stop masturbating to switch ads.
It seems that these keyboards would be great for gesture input. That could obsolete you mouse too.. :)
Check out TrailRegistry.com, my hiking site, Maps, altitude pr
manufacturers hope to take a significant share of the $1.6 billion dollar PDA market, the $50 billion dollar desk workstation market and the $23 billion dollar (by 2004) smart cellular phone market.
Um, that little squiggly thing in front of the numbers? That tells us that the number is representative of dollars.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Simple...the projected 'f' and 'j' keys should be boosted to heat the table top to just under the boiling point. This would also encourage faster typing.
If you shine these into your face, can you type by pretending you're in a Munch painting?
Better yet, you could then learn to touch type by the burned-in keyboard laying over your visual field for the next week.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
really funny :-)
a pitty you are AC
-- Or So Tewfik Wrote. --
However, it could be an advantage when playing games where you map keys into actions...
Also, I think I use the tactile feedback to recenter my fingers on the keyboard. I would have to align my projection onto a specially carved surface to get my alignment right.
Finally such a keyboard ought to look cool in fog!
Just project onto a piece of foam. Make a small Thermarest pad and it can roll up into a pretty small ball.
:) A special matte or selectively retroreflective surface would also be good and it would be easy enough to emboss/stitch/whatever home key bumps on the foam too.
For projected keyboards, you might even have better accuracy if the surface deforms and reflects the light randomly (except for the issue of a finger being in the way
I've gotten very used to one of these swoopy keyboards that are split in half. I'd imagine that with a v-keyboard you could put it in any configuration your want, and having it split and angled would be very nice and go a ways toward comfort.
Heck, it's all software controlled (assumably). You could split it where you want it, or even duplicate some keys on each side (I still reach over periodically and try to hit the B key with my right hand).
Damn, how about game controllers? Totally custom per game. And with two players, it could project two controls, though they would have to be pretty close to each other. But overall I think game controllers could be a pretty big deal with these.
Just some random thoughts...
Jason
Website - Bearbones. No developer kit.
Seems like the bones from a full-grown bear would be too big to easily fit on a desk. Are they killing bear cubs to build these things? What is PETA going to say?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Is there a way to filter comments which are not on topic, posted by an intempt dork who shouldn't be blogging in the first place, or anything mentioning cats?
This should reduce my search time for something relevent by 4 times.
But what I want to know is, if you're going to re-invent the keyboard, why not do it right? The most comportable keyboard I ever used was the Smartboard (or here) . Instead of just turning the keyboard in, like those crappy Microsoft keyboards, they also line the keys up correctly. About time - the only reason key rows are offset like they are is historical accident. Key rows used to be offset so all the mechanical arms would have room to reach the keys - not because they're even close to comportable.
And don't even get me started on Dvorak, which I've used for the past six years. Novel idea - why not use a key layout which is optimized for speed, comport, and accuracy, instead of one which was custom-make to slow you down.
Of course, with a laser keyboard, you could easily program whatever layout you want (with the correct labels), and possibly even use a Smartboard-type layout (although it is patented) ...
The review is interesting, but there are even more keyboard alternatives that have a plausible shot at market acceptance. One that got a fair amount of press attention at Comdex (Yes, there were people there to see it) is the FrogPad keyboard which manages to generate a full keyboard's worth of scan codes from 15 keys and four shifts.
The benefit: You get a keyboard with full-sized keys that fits in the space of a 3x5 index card, or you can reduce the key size by a bit and end up with a PDA-sized keyboard that's still manageable.
The downside: You have to learn a whole new way of typing, albeit one that is designed to make common letter sequences easy to enter. Try it - print the picture of the FrogPad keyboard and pretend you're typing on it. It's not built for 120 words per minute, but I can see how it could be a true QWERTY replacement for the average typist.
Another thought - if the FrogPad or some other device of the kind discussed here are accepted by the market (and that's a BIG if), what kind of new form factors could we see in keyboard-based devices? Current PDAs and laptops suddenly look sooo last century!
Now, if I could go out and get a used pda for about $100.00 that could surf the net through my cell phone, and then do all my e-mails, some coding, and even possibly some older, classic games by just going out and getting one of these keyboards, instead of having to carry around one of those annoying "mini-keyboards" or a full sized ones, for another $100.00 or so, I'd break my neck going out and buying one.
Now a lot of people on here have raised the point that typing on a hard desk would be hell on the fingers, and, that also, people rely on the "feel' of the keys for typing. As the world's greatest two-fingered touch typist, me and my roommate decided to put this to the test.
My roommate has a poster of the different keyboard layouts, so we pulled it off the wall and set it on our kitchen counter. Then, using the qwerty format, I tried typing out different sentences while looking at my computer screen from across the room, while he watched and saw what I typed.
While I did have more errors than I'm used to, they steadily decreased as we progressed. And, while it does feel weird not actually pushing the keys at first, after a few minutes I realized that this was Much more comfortable than using a keyboard. The trick is to remember that, with these things, you won't have to actually "push" the key, just tap it lightly.
All in all, I'm looking forward to seeing how well these things work. If they work well, I'll definitely be buying a PDA.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
she's cute and if she can type instead of me this works fine for me.
cu,
Lispy
1. A virtual keyboard is all about shortcuts...no one is proposing they be used for anything more than convenience. If you need to work for 8 hours, you'll need an actual keyboard.
2.) Be serious....I can lie my hand on my knee and raise/lower my outstretched fingers for quite some time without any kind of stress or need for wrist support. Why do you insist on maintaining the old model for a new process?
3.) Custom keystrokes can actually be easier since you can do things virtually that can't be done with a traditional keyboard made of plastic, etc. What happens when you press the 'a' and 'd' keys at the same time on an actual keyboard? Nothing. However, with a virtual keyboard, any combination of keystrokes can be utilized.
And again....these virtual keyboards are not meant to replace an actual keyboard. They are for uses coupled with PDA's, wrist communicators, head mounted units, etc. Using your hands to wave goodbye to your old keyboard will cause stress too...why worry about it.
Review Of Upcoming Projectile Keyboards.
Now that would have been interesting to read about.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Urgh! I tried it out, and while it is definitely easier on the fingertips I can't imagine having the accuracy that having a tactile feedback allows.
I'm typing this without looking at the keyboard, and being able to feel the shape of the key tops as I hit them lets me know that I'm hitting the keys square in the middle. It's like recalibrating my position every time I hit a key. With a projected keyboard I would need to keep looking at the keys to make sure that my hands weren't straying from the regions defined for each key.
Personally, at home I still use an old AT tactile "clicky" keyboard. I find that being able to feel the microswitch in each keystroke results in greater accuracy. If I accidentally brush an incorrect key I can tell by both touch and sound if it triggered a keystroke.
Just my $.02.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
does anyone else hate it when for example you have a friend over and you're showin' off your copy of the latest game, and your friend takes over and starts like slamming the space bar in a gaming frenzy. now you can introduce him/her to 2 inch thick composite plywood as your keyboard...he he
another thing. my piano teacher asks me sometimes to play on the keyboard cover, which is solid wood, to strengthen my fingers - so my guess is typing on a solid surface would strengthen fingers (now to do what, I don;t know!)
with one of these things? I can just see it now (in approximate NetHack-ese):
...
Hey, I'm finally going to win! Here comes Rodney, I'll label the real amulet so I can recover it when he steals it.
"You remove your Amulet of Life Saving"
What the hell? I'll put it back on.
"You wear the Amulet of Yendor. The Wizard of Yendor summons Demogorgon."
Oh crap. I'll engrave Elbereth to protect me.
"You burn 'Rlberrth' into the ground with your wand of fire. Demogorgon poisons the hell out of you."
!@#$%. I have to teleport myself away. Where's my wand
"You zap yourself with a wand of Polymorph, and are turned into a newt. Demogorgon laughs his @$$ off. You have died of sickness."
Of course, since we're talking about virtual keyboards that don't exist yet, then this should be considered a "virtual review". Which is like saying Duke Nukemn Forever is a "virtual product".
gorgo: *lol* :) :>
joey: what's so funny?
shh, joey is losing all sanity from lack of sleep
'yes joey, very funny'
Humor him
-- Seen on #Debian
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