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Microsoft Hardware Demos Pressure-Sensitive Keyboard
Krystalo writes to tell us that Microsoft hardware has an interesting demo of a pressure-sensitive keyboard they have designed. While there are no currently announced plans to turn this into a shipping product, there are many cool uses that one could imagine a device like this providing. "The device will be put to use in the first annual Student Innovation Contest in Victoria, Canada, where contestants will be supplied with a keyboard prototype and challenged with developing new interactions for it. Contestants will demo their creations and attendees will vote for their favorite at the conference on October 5. $2,000 prizes will be given to the authors of programs deemed as the most useful, the best implementation, and the most innovative."
A keyboard that can actually detect when someone presses on a key! Will wonders never cease.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Is this going to feed into the system that tells whether the user is angry or not? What does it matter the amount of pressure you use to press the key? That's why we have 104 key keyboards, we hit the key we want, however we want to...
light pressure for lower case 'a', harder pressure for upper case 'A', and abrupt spikes in pressure for expletives "#$@^%^!".
Now keyboards can report abuse when I beat the shit out of it when I get pissed off
Will this thing detect proper amounts of pressure from a chair?
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
Rubber dome keys, keys do different things based on different pressures, extra useless features, won't be hard to type on at all.
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Yes, yes and more yes. The one thing I've always wanted in a keyboard. No more walk/run modifier key or jerky steering in driving/flying games. Yay!
I am tired of copying and pasting everything from character map since my keyboard is incapable of this functionality.
Can't believe no one has made a musical keyboard comment yet...On the other hand, it seems we just keep getting closer and closer to LCARS.
This keyboard could be a boon to Emacs users. pressing a key "lightly" could mean to run the lisp function bound to the "light press" of the key. Many common operations would no longer require Control or Meta chords.
How about the students sit on their ideas and market them when the keyboard comes out?
Should be worth more then a lousy $2000, especially considering the fact that the students will have NO intellectual property rights once they submit through the contest.
Just another way for MS to steal ideas, patent them and then pocket all the profits.
On another note, I wonder what MS employees think about their employer opting to go outside the company for ideas rather then feed their employees families.
Great, I can see it now. I sit down to type some angry letter to someone and Clippy is going to pop up:
"You seem to be pressing the keys very hard, are you upset?"
Its going to be the next Eliza.
It's just like windows. Press Harder if you REALLY meant to type "a".
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
EXCELLENT, NOW THE WORLD WILL KNOW HOW ANGRY I AM WITH 8 BIT PRECISION!!!!! (/. rejected this comment until I added this in parenthesis )
Every keyboard I've ever used has been pressure sensitive. They need a different name for this.
With precedent, I suggest "keyboard col piano e forte."
I hope they didn't patent this. If they did, there's prior art. I mean, aside from pianos. With manual typewriters, when the ribbon got old, the harder you pressed, the darker the character.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
They really need a better name.
Perhaps simply calling it "Variable Pressure Keyboard"
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I honestly read the summary title as "Microsoft Hardware Demos Pleasure Sensitive Keyboard".
Needless to say I was very disturbed...
hmmm... press harder on the keys to get a darker font...
http://images.google.com/images?q=antique+typewriter
Bonus points will be awarded for submissions somewhat related to this usage scenario.
@Windows
ctrl-alt-DEL DEL DEL DEL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Will respond at the level of anger of the user!!!!
The real question is what kind of sensitivity response you will get when you hit someone over the head with your keyboard. Discuss among yourselves, any troll commentators will be seen as volunteering themselves for testing in this field.
I've heard that pounding the S in Microsoft will provide a convenient shortcut for Micro$oft.
So, one thing I remember from my error correcting codes course was that if you kept a certainty measure with the bits in a message when you decoded it you could change the 'less certain' bits first.
So now imagine a spell checker in OO.o that takes this into account. You could filter out accidental hits more easily or if the user is gaming the system, lightly tap the letters you think are wrong and get better results in the drop-down.
To post a real use for the keyboard...
Moving using the WASD keys in a FPS: Light touch means walk - Normal pressure means run. I would probably like this better than using a separate key to turn run on & off, but don't make me ever use more than normal pressure for running in a game.
I can press the 'Y' key real hard and avoid all the "Are you sure?" dialogs!!!!
"It looks like you're pounding on the keyboard in frustration Can I help you with that?"
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
The sugar would really screw with the electrical resistance junk inside the keyboard. I'll need extra large plastic bags to protect it.
-Variable scroll speed with arrow keys
-Double-map function keys to get through F24
-Pressure patterns can be analyzed to suggest how to improve ergonomics on a per-user basis. Combine with some sort of flexible/customizable keyboard that can produce a variety of shapes and you can adjust it in seconds. It would be sweet to have a keyboard that changes how it is raised or curved automatically in response to how you are typing.
-Apply this to cell phones so texting on a standard num-pad requires only 1 press per letter (would require a toggle switch or button as the learning curve would be frustrating)
My webcomic
Excellent! Keyboards from now on will need only 1 key!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
No, you misunderstood...
I feel very sorry for this poor sensitive keyboard - feeling pressured by Microsoft's hardware demos.
Not that it's the only one who feels pressured by MS, mind you!
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
This is great news. Now that we're able to record the nuanced performance of a touch-typist with decent fidelity, we'll be able play those performances back on actuator-enabled mechanical keyboards to get a reproduction nearly indistinguishable from the live performances. Certainly better than those old-fashioned paper roll macros.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Why can't we just have a pressure sensitive mouse? Graphics tablets aren't for everyone, mmkay?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
It would seem clear to any idiot that the examples given in the video are utterly useless.
So, how about some uses that might actually work?
I'll start with this one: Ignore the lightest key presses. How often have you accidentally triggered a key whilst you were simply moving your hands around? If you just completely ignore any key presses below a certain treshold, this may be eliminated.
Or perhaps this; if you press some adjacent keys simultaneously, the keyboard driver could only register the key that was pressed hardest. This would help thick-fingered people on netbook-sized keyboards.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Much as I hate MSFT--I love their ergonomic keyboards and mice (even more than logitech).
I can think of lots of great things for this...
I've already seen utilities that monitor keyboard frequency to authenticate who's typing (different people typing at different rates, with different correlations between related keys).
Imagine if in addition to a password, there was...pressure differences recorded. Hunt and peck would certainly be different than qwerty users--and I suspect for example that I hit space much harder than other users. Can you imagine if your password was pressure sensitive on the stroke (or profiled for that matter, so a random keylogger couldn't steal passwords if it presented you with a "challenge paragraph".
Somebody save this post as prior art.
You could probably do something more interesting with chorded pressures (music?). But that doesn't seem so innovative..
What about toggling the repeat rate based upon pressure? Could be handy with arrow keys... Dynamic character set toggling? I've got capslock bound to escape for vim--but it'd be nice if I could still rarely use capslock (hit it *really* hard).
I can even imagine making use of heuristics with this to help avoid typos in word processing--a soft/"hesitant" press on a delete/enter/key likely to cause a typo according to the spellcheck might pop up the hated clippy with a prompt.
On that note--can anybody recommend a place that sells ergonomic keyboards, but in the nice old IBM "ultra heavy leaf spring" style that gives the nice satisfying tchunk feel when you press them--instead of the soft, squishyish feel you get with the modern keyboards with that...plastic bubble stuff under them?
~~(V)~~
If pressing harder made something go faster or higher or louder or whatever I could see a lot of users complaining about finger and hand fatigue.
My hands are already tired as it is!
So the harder you press Ctrl+Alt+Delete the quicker it will restart?
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
When they come out with keyboards that are designed like the ones in Star Trek or Ghost in the Shell : SAC, then I will be truly content with my typing apparatus.
If they want to use it for gaming, it's going to need to send aftertouch signals, indicating changes in pressure while the key is held. Otherwise how will it know when you go from a walk to a run without releasing the button, or want to go from burst fire to full auto?
It's not that hard folks, MIDI keyboards have been able to do this for decades.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
A keyboard that can Auto Capitalize as I type. The would be awesome.
This is a boring sig
1, 2, 3, 4 ... 105, times 2, 210 new keys, if we assume light and hard presses, and not even counting all the combo keys, 2 ctrls, 2 alts, 2 shifts, 2 win keys, 1 apps, and the state locking keys. (insert included, the commonly forgotten state key, mainly because he is always a dick) :)
Holy awesome new space i could use for hotkeys, been running out of usable ones.
I've had to start doing multi-press keys now, all the way up to 5 on one key.
Also, no, i am not a machine.
There are so many uses for this keyboard.
Just a shame a great one, gaming, is fairly dead these days.
On forums, the redder your text, the heavier you pressed your keys. That would be fun. And make it really sensitive as well so people would try to type as slowly as possible, which might benefit the posting quality.
Dynamic music generator, or just a plugin to switch music depending on your mood, based on your typing.
These aren't the best examples, but just the few i like.
No, it'll be perfect for Emacs users. Now they can add "light press", "medium press", "hard press", "whacked key" to the list of available modifiers! Think of how much more productive they can be now that they increased the number of modifiers available. Now every function will be able to be mapped to a keystroke or a set of them. E.g., whack Q 5 times to quit.
Has anyone mentioned that entering music via the keyboard is also an option now? (I kid, I kid...)
It would seem that if you can say profile someone by the way they type, this would just make it easier to ID people by the way they use their keyboard.
Great for invasion of privacy uses, but also might make for new types of biometric security. If you are logged in to a session, and some other person starts using your keyboard the computer to could just lock you out.
Now, if we can just figure out how to secure Windows somehow.
Living in Chile
A solution looking for a problem.
With 8-bit resolution, Apple can finally create a one button keyboard that accompanies their one button mice.
... creating a product to solve a problem? Now microsoft is just creating useless garbage and trying to make it useful
The paper was titled, "Utilizing Pressure-sensitive Keyboards to Enhance the Realism of Real-Time Sexual Interactions between Three-Dimensional Avatars".
I can see use for this in elevators... when you really have to use the bathroom. Finally a button that can sense urgency!
SLAMSLAMSLAM-omgihavetogo-SLAMSLAMSLAM
Something witty.
Microsoft will then patent the winning interactions and rabid lawyers will lay waste to the homes of the winners.
Dipshit slashdot programmer tip #23.
Protip: patent your ideas before demonstrating them to Microsoft, that's probably the only way you'll make any real money. $2,000 for the winner of such an idea is a pittance, and if your idea is not chosen, you will get nothing, even though the idea may still be used later on.
The DualShock 2 for the PlayStation 2 could sense pressure with every button except L3, R3, Start, and Select, but was never really used for much. In MGS2 it was used; you could ease your finger off the "fire" button to avoid shooting a weapon. It would seem to make a difference in racing games, however, users that wanted the sensitivity preferred acceleration/brake on the right thumbstick in racing games because you had more of a sense of how far you were pushing the stick.
On a keyboard it would seem to matter even less for gamers... If you want that much sensitivity in the FPS genre, just use a joystick/mouse combo.
Twinstiq, game news
Microsoft invents hammer, holds contest to find nail.
Also when you press keys concurrently they can all have different modifiers.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
We could use the keyboard to change the volume, attack, decay of musical note. Heck we could even include some side to side motion on the key to change other characteristics and... oh wait, my music keyboards have done this for years. Are you sure this is patentable? Oh, I guess if you can patent a word processor in 2009 you can patent anything....
If you put it under pressure, say by typing too fast, it will whine at you. "Why can't you just say nice things about me, just because I am from Microsoft doesn't mean I don't have feelings!"
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you are shorter of breath and one day closer to death
on this. Save this slashdot page repeatedly as any suggestion here is prior art and make sure it is in the public domain for a long time (e.g. as a time-stamped PDF).
Bert
When you are typing in your Microsoft product key off the sticker, if you are pressing the keys too hard, then it means you're nervous, and therefore a pirate, so you'll have to call into Microsoft and read off the 'activation request code' that secretly communicates the fact you were one of those people.
In addition, MS word will internally keep track of how much pressure was used to enter each character in your documents.
When you send them around, this can be covertly used by other people to inspect your documents and determine what parts may have been made up, since you subconciously used more pressure to type those words.
Another way to enter the tones in languages like Mandarin. (Huge market there.)
So hunt and peck keyboardist won't know what's coming at them. Perhaps if you wanted to play your qwerty as a an actual synth, then maybe.
The only other use I could see would be for authentication. You type a sentence at your regular speed and pressure and voila you have your password.
Mayhaps we should already move on to a silicone blob that devours your hands and types whatever the hell it wants. Oh wait....
Be 6 to 16 characters long ... ...
Must contain five or more letters, and it must begin and end with a letter
Must contain one or more high pressure characters
Must contain one or more numeric characters
Great this means Emacs can now add 1000s more useless features.
*Ducks*
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Wow, noone has thought of using this for p0rn yet. Imagine what having a pressure sensitive keyboard could do for porn sites ? I mean, they could use the mouse movements and keyboard pressure to get you .....
I hate WASD, I like ESDF because it's more natural to type there with that little notch under your index finger so you know where you are. This sensitivity feature would be great with games. They should extend it beyond just run versus walk and have variable speeds. The only problem is that it will get tiresome if you had to push the W or E key hard just to run forward.
There is a usability issue - different people prefer different settings, as their hands have a different strength. The keyboard must be able to memorize a "user profile", otherwise folks on multi-user systems (or those who use someone else's computer) will have issues.
It is impractical for us to carry that profile around on portable media, and not every machine is connected to the Internet; perhaps the alternative is to choose your profile from a list of preset categories (ex: beginner, ex-typist, hardcore gamer, etc).
This can also be used as a form of authentication, but I doubt it will be reliable; besides, it is by definition much slower than scanning a finger.
The saddest poem
I mean, no existing company wants to build a better, cheaper mousetrap. The point is, the free market is supposed to reward a company that does, and punish (through competition) those who don't adapt.
I don't know if it is the case with the poster's company, but I know it is becoming very common that even ideas you come up with in your own time are considered to be the property of whatever company you happen to work for. The argument would run, "Well, he wouldn't have come up with the idea of the single part lancet if he hadn't been exposed to the 15 part lancet which we manufacture, therefore, we own the patent on his invention by default."
Disney is a showcase example of this sort of rule. As are most Universities. And it is exactly because of this kind of practice which results in idea suppression that the "Anything Goes, No Regulation" idea of the Free Market is total bunk. Allowing behemoth companies the freedom to suppress the masses is anti-competitive. --Competition will NOT eventually cause stupid ideas to fail and good ideas to succeed; it is entirely possible to rule with an iron fist for long periods of time. Look at the richest families on the planet. They have been that way for hundereds of years, and not because they deserve to be, but rather because they won the game a long time ago and they still own Boardwalk and Parkplace and they aren't selling. It's like being forced to continue to play Monopoly by borrowing money from the winner at interest and having to do real work in order to pay it down. Slavery.
A little bit of regulation can prevent centuries long lock-downs of the human mind and spirit. --Which is exactly why we will never get real and honest regulation.
The elites love the idea of the "Free Market". --It provides them with the license to continue in corrupt and abusive practices. And so they sell it like crazy to the masses, and the masses, having had their brains softened up through years of toxic food, over-long work days, stupid schooling and plenty of TV, are now too numb to realize they are being manipulated.
Of course, the world is not entirely locked down. There is still a little bit of wiggle room, but even that is a tightly controlled commodity. The only way to win is to stop playing the game. But that's hard to do, isn't it? There's a war on right now to prevent people from growing and sharing their own food.
-FL
What I want is a velocity-sensitive keyboard.
My dream: a word processor that renders the emotional expressiveness of keystrokes.
If I hit the keys fast and hard, that means I'm angry, so use the angry font, goddamit.
If I stroke the keys slow and sensual, that means I'm making love to the keyboard, so call the authorities already ....
-kgj
duh, what american is not coke head? viagra head? even YOUR MOM like to trip in ritalin, she's a ritalin head that gives good head. :O
I can imagine that this keyboard will try to commit suicide when you try to work on late projects... under pressure, indeed.
once i actually thought about entering one of microsofts "contests" - until I read the rules...
you MIGHT win some money, but you have to give them a FULLY FUNCTIONAL piece of software (worth months of coding), that could earn them billions at instant... and no matter if they sell it or trash it, you have to give them all the rights - just for the freakin CHANCE to win some money (if you don't - well then you wasted months of coding) and the contest I thought about entering: the maximum price would have been 500 ($700) - and to implement my Idea decently I would have to put 2 months of coding in it... so the best I could have hoped for would have been earnings of $350/Month (I made twice that much at my job as a student assistant!) I don't think that's a contest, thats freakin exploitation!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Here's an idea for a practical use of the pressure sensitive keyboard, an idea which may put a team of contestants off to a good start. You know, most of the time you typo you know you are about to do it a split second before you actually do. Like while you are in the process of typoing, you can feel yourself hit the wrong key. It's like your brain screams YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG, but your body just can't stop pressing that wrong key.
This leads to a scenario where there is likely an abnormal amount of pressure on the "wrong" key press, like a light pressed keystroke (a 'checked swing' if you can deal with a baseball analogy), while at the same time there might be an even lighter pressed keystroke on the "right" key, or maybe a full on keystroke on the "right" key immediately following the checked swing on the wrong key.
This pressure sensitive technology might be useful after all. It may help develop a keyboard which aids humans in minimizing typos.
Just a hint contestants, just a hint.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!