Tuesday, March 31, 2009

13 unusual keyboard designs

1. Roll-up keyboard
  • Rolls-up for easy storage and portability
  • Dust and moisture proof
  • Standard 104-key keyboard
  • Choose from PS/2 only or both USB & PS/2 connectivity
  • Lifetime of approximately 15,000,000 keystrokes!

Roll up keyboard


2. WristPC Keyboard

The WristPC is a rugged QWERTY keyboard with a standard PC keyboard interface. Completely sealed, it can operate in the rain and other harsh environments. A curved back provides a secure and comfortable placement on the wrist. The keyboard layout is optimized to provide alphanumeric entry. Carefully positioned arrow keys ease menu-oriented tasks. The WristPC keyboard comes with an optional wrist strap to provide the capability of attaching it to your wrist.

WristPC Keyboard



3. orbiTouch Keyboard

The orbiTouch is a revolutionary keyless ergonomic keyboard solution that removes the barrier posed by the traditional keyboard/mouse combination. Persons who benefit include those with repetitive stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome , other hand and finger injuries, limited fine motor skills, reduced finger function and other cognitive and physical challenges. The orbiTouch Keyless ergonomic Keyboard creates a keystroke when you slide the two domes into one of their eight respective positions.


Orbitouch Keyboard


4. Optimus Maximus keyboard

Optimus’s customizable layout allows convenient use of any language - Cyrillic, Ancient Greek, Georgian, Arabic, Quenya, hiragana, etc. -as well as of any other character set: notes, numerals, special symbols, HTML codes, math functions and so on to infinity. Each key is a stand-alone display that shows the function currently assigned to it. Every button on the keyboard (or, more precisely, a module consisting of a moving cap, a microchip and a display) can be easily removed to clean or replace.


optimus maximus keyboard

5. Virtual laser keyboard

The I-Tech Virtual Keyboard uses a light projection of a full-sized computer keyboard on almost any surface. Used with PDA’s and Smart Phones, the Virtual Keyboard provides a practical way to do e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet tasks, enabling users to leave laptops and computers at home.



Virtual Laser Keyboard

6. Das Keyboard

The Das Keyboard Professional provides the best typing experience combined with a modern glossy look and useful features. Das Keyboard sports best-in-class German-engineered gold-plated mechanical key switches that provide tactile and audio feedback making typing a pure joy.


Das keyboard

7. Alpha iGrip Keyboard

The iGrip incorporates AlphaGrip's hi-speed, handheld data entry technology. It looks and feels like a game controller, but has all the functionality of a keyboard and mouse. The secret to the iGrip's hi-speed capabilities are the 8 rocker buttons on the back, which enable 16 single-finger-single-press keystrokes on full-size keys. iGrip combines the 10-finger control benefits of a keyboard with the freedom and versatility of a game controller.



iGrip Ergonomic Keyboard



8. Maltron 3D Ergonomic Keyboard

The L89 Keyboard is the same letter layout as the E Type J89 PS/2 keyboard but with a native USB interface and may be used with either a PC or an Apple. The fully ergonomic fits the shape of hands and the different lengths of fingers to reduce movement and tension. Split design eliminates wrist twist and allows a central number cluster which can be used by right or left hand as preferred.



Maltron 3D Ergonomic Keyboard


9. Frogpad

The FrogPad mobile keypad with its innovative 20 full-size key layout optimized around the most frequently used characters sets a new standard in information access with superior portability and ergonomics, global adaptability, rapid learning and ease of use. Its unique patented keystroke algorithms enable it to be used in either a right or left-handed mode and with any international language set.

Frogpad keyboard


10. Tidy Tippist

The marriage of eating and tipping: the decorative tablecloth, made of felt, contains a textile keyboard. The electronic is woven into a fabric, which finds itself between layers of water resistant felt as sandwich material. The soft felt surface makes it a pleasure for fingers to tip a cozy keyboard.



Tidy Tippist keyboard


11. Twiddler 2

The Twiddler2 is a pocket sized mouse pointer with a full-function keyboard in a single unit that fits neatly in either right or left hand. The Twiddler2 plugs into both keyboard and mouse PS/2 ports (USB port with the PS/2 to USB Adapter) on any computer that accepts standard PS/2 mouse and keyboard (or USB input). Combining major innovations in pointer and keyboard technology, the twiddler is designed to bring renewed enjoyment to current computer users and to attract newcomers to the world of personal computing.




twiddler keyboard

12. SafeType keyboard

This well thought at keyboard will allow you to type in a relaxed position, saving you the pain. All that despite its futurist look. The supplementary keypad allows the user to position the 10-key numeric pad with arrow keys anywhere that is most usable and comfortable. It can be on the left or the right, or even in your lap. We are constantly amazed by the tremendous variation in challenges and how people find solutions for their own problems.

safetype keyboard

13. Datahand keyboard

The DataHand ergonomic keyboard offers a total of 132 keys (more than even extended flat keyboards) through the use of five key switches clustered around the tips of each of the fingers. With four modes, shifted by the thumbs, hand movement is no longer required to perform keyboard work. Hand support results in the elimination of the major source of muscular-skeletal stress in hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, backs, and necks.

datahand keyboard

Monday, March 23, 2009

Server operating system

Server operating system — such as FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux — are derived from or are similar to UNIX. UNIX was originally a minicomputer operating system, and as servers gradually replaced traditional minicomputers, UNIX was a logical and efficient choice of operating system for the servers. UNIX-based operating systems, many of which are free in both senses, are popular.

Server-oriented operating systems tend to have certain features in common that make them more suitable for the server environment, such as

* GUI not available or optional,
* ability to reconfigure and update both hardware and software to some extent without restart,
* advanced backup facilities to permit regular and frequent online backups of critical data,
* transparent data transfer between different volumes or devices,
* flexible and advanced networking capabilities,
* automation capabilities such as daemons in UNIX and services in Windows, and
* tight system security, with advanced user, resource, data, and memory protection.

Monday, March 16, 2009

HTML

HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document—by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on—and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of tags, surrounded by angle brackets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code (such as JavaScript) which can affect the behavior of Web browsers and other HTML processors.

HTML markup consists of several key components, including elements (and their attributes), character-based data types, and character references and entity references. Another important component is the document type declaration, which specifies the Document Type Definition.As of HTML 5, no Document Type Definition will need to be specified, and will only determine the layout mode.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Java applet

A Java applet is an applet delivered to the users in the form of Java byte code. Java applets can run in a Web browser using a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), or in Sun's Applet Viewer, a stand-alone tool for testing applets. Java applets were introduced in the first version of the Java language in 1995. Java applets are usually written in the Java programming language but they can also be written in other languages that compile to Java byte code such as Jython.

Applets are used to provide interactive features to web applications that cannot be provided by HTML. Since Java's byte code is platform independent, Java applets can be executed by browsers for many platforms, including Windows, UNIX, Mac OS and Linux. There are open source tools like applet2app which can be used to convert an applet to a stand alone Java application/windows executable/Linux executable. This has the advantage of running a Java applet in offline mode without the need for internet browser software.

Many influential Java developers, blogs and magazines are recommending that the Java Web Start technology be used in place of Applets.

A Java Server is sometimes informally compared to be "like" a server-side applet, but it is different in its language, functions, and in each of the characteristics described here about applets.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Java Server Pages

Java Server Pages (JSP) is a Java technology that allows software developers to create dynamically-generated web sites, with HTML, XML, or other document types, in response to a Web client request. The technology allows Java code and certain pre-defined actions to be embedded into static content.

The JSP syntax adds additional XML-like tags, called JSP actions, to be used to invoke built-in functionality. Additionally, the technology allows for the creation of JSP tag libraries that act as extensions to the standard HTML or XML tags. Tag libraries provide a platform independent way of extending the capabilities of a Web server.

JSPs are compiled into Java Servers by a JSP compiler. A JSP compiler may generate a server in Java code that is then compiled by the Java compiler, or it may generate byte code for the server directly. JSPs can also be interpreted on-the-fly, reducing the time taken to reload changes.

Architecturally, JSP may be viewed as a high-level abstraction of servers that is implemented as an extension of the Server 2.1 API. Both servers and JSPs were originally developed at Sun Microsystems. Starting with version 1.2 of the JSP specification, Java Server Pages have been developed under the Java Community Process. JSR 53 defines both the JSP 1.2 and Server 2.3 specifications and JSR 152 defines the JSP 2.0 specification. As of May 2006 the JSP 2.1 specification has been released under JSR 245 as part of Java EE 5.