Displays in your keyboard?

Original post from May 25th 2007

The Optimus Maximus keyboard project is trying to create a completely programmable, or user re-definable, keyboard by placing a small, bitmap, OLED display in every key!

This may sound useless at first glance, but for some application domains it makes sense.
Think of photo editing, or CAD, or graphics design where you have applications with a lot of dedicated functions that you want rapid access to.

Or direct keys to start applications (Office, Browser, etc), web pages or Media Keys.
They could be localized to minority languages without carrying extra SKUs and stock, but volumes for most languages will be sufficient with normal keyboards to not make sense for this.

Who remembers a UK computer (Apricot) back in '80's with little LCD screens (poor contrast monochome) above the function keys that were reprogrammed according to the "softkey" settings of the application.
It tanked!

You can check out there web here.
There blog where you can track the development process can be found here http://community.livejournal.com/optimus_project/.

If you get excited, you can pre-order one from there first production run for only US$1560 or 1256Euro. Let me know, I'd love to here how it works.