2008.03.18
Have a look at this article on SlashGear. It details a guy who has made a custom 360 controller for people who are unfortunate enough to only have one hand. It is designed for use with the right hand at the moment but there is no reason why the design couldn’t be switched to the left.
No idea how long it would take to get used to but it would be interesting to see what people who need it think of it, or even people who don’t. I’d try it, to try and see how long it would take to get used to it.
Great idea. More people should be looking at things like this.
2008.03.12
There is a new application about to become a public beta that could change the way people sync data between machines but also the way people share data with each other.
Its called Dropbox and its a revolutionary system for syncing across multiple platforms and requires no sophisticated setup, in fact very little setup at all.
The way it works is by integrating itself into the system your using. So for example you have a folder called ‘Dropbox’ and everything within there can be synced across the web as long as you install Dropbox on the target computer and sign in. Rather than having to click ‘update’ or ’sync’ or whatever and have to wait while all the files are uploaded or checked etc. Dropbox simply uploads the changes in the file only, therefore saving on bandwidth and increasing the speed of the service.
Obviously there are limitations with this and only certain applications will supported (I presume) but the implications are wide reaching. A long with this, you don’t have to click ‘update’ or ’sync’ on the destination computer as it is reflected as soon as it detects changes to the online folder.
There are loads more features and I’ve already signed up for the public beta and I suggest you do the same. This could be THE way of sharing and syncing information.
Check out the video here.
2008.02.22
I saw a prototype for this a few years ago and thought it was a genius idea. It’s a keyboard that has OLED screens built into the keys. With the bundled software this means you can change the layout of the keys, what the keys do and even what the keys look like. I saw the prototype using a layout designed for Quake, but ANY software program or game could use a customised keyboard layout.
“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 sets: notes, numerals, special symbols, HTML codes, math functions and so on to infinity.”
Priced at around $400 its a lot to pay for a keyboard, and I’m not sure if they’re available over here yet but at least you know that you can change the layout to UK with ease!
2008.02.20
As I so often like to blog about Apple’s cool new feature that they have patented I thought I would do the honours with a new offering from the company. This article shows a new ‘customisable’ user touch interface, allowing for gestures using your whole hand to be allocated to different tasks.
Original Article Here