Programmable keyboard layout
This has been floating around for a while, but later this week pre-orders will start to be taken:
Optimus Maximus Keyboard http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/
The current price tag and production schedule leaves it out of real contention for a year or so, but this is awesome.
It’s a keyboard using tiny organice LEDs (touch-sensitive) to render a graphic that usually happens to look like a computer keyboard, but could be a piano keyboard, animations, or anything else that you might want from a human user interface.
Imagine the keyboard automatically adjusting for regional settings, or flipping between MacOS and Windows in a virtual machine.
Apart from the very cool layout ideas, there’s also the idea of having it provide build status and summary for CruiseControl, perhaps making the build breakers’ keyboard have a very red background, and the rest of the team have a prominent build light area somewhere on the keyboard.
(Reminds me of the Star Trek PADDs and consoles…)
