Digital Memo Taker

Original Post from October 21st 2008.

The product shown below (from this translated version of their web site) reminds me of some of the eBook concepts I was throwing around a year or so ago, when I was discussing the idea of an "eBook reader" being the display part of a disaggregated computer, but one where the "display" would have useful functionality when on it's own...

I discussed using one of the foldable keyboards on the market, and simply "docking" an eBook reader type device into it, to produce something not dissimilar to that shown in the image above. Although I wanted a dual-A-page eBook that folded out to A4 size.

This product will no doubt be the butt of "yet another device" criticisms as eBooks are, and hence I suspect only of interest for some very special applications.

This particular one has an LCD screen, but if all it does is take notes then I could see it with en E-Ink display and even lighter/thinner and with longer battery life, beyond he 20 hours stated here. With a bistable display, you can imaging a device that "sleeps" between keystrokes...

N-trig multi-touch and stylus input for laptops etc

Original Post from May 21st 2008.

When researching available technologies for touch input a couple of months ago, I came across this Israeli tech company called N-trig that has developed a touch input tech suitable for laptops, LCD screens etc. It offers multi-touch input AND stylus input in the same device on top of the LCD display.

They have a bunch of videos on YouTube, and there is a joint one with Dell that seemed to suggest Dell would be shipping this in their Laptops toon. I suspect this has been revamped and dug up for the SID display conference.

Anyway, here is the link to the Engadget post, which includes one of the videos demonstrating it. If you watch it, then from YouTube you can find other related ones, including the Dell one.

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.