alvi's Blog

Every now and then, there comes a gadget that is simply worth drooling over. The Optimus Maximus keyboard is one of those gadgets that is a simple Must-Have, if it was a little cheaper i.e. What is so special about the keyboard you say? Just imagine, a keyboard that is customizable to the very limits! Yes it lets you customize each and every key of the very special 113 Keys it boasts!

Customizable Keys and Layout

Yep, Each key is a stand-alone display that shows the function currently assigned to it. The Optimus Maximus integrates a standalone LED in each of its 113 keys. Each LED has a size of 10.1 x 10.1 mm and offers a resolution of 48 x 48 pixels.

According to Art Lebedev, the keys can not only display images, but videos with frame rates of up to 10 fps as well. Up to 65,536 colors are supported, which can be seen on viewing angles of up to 160 degrees. Image and video layouts are stored on a SD flash memory card, which can be inserted on the back of the keyboard.

Read on for more stunning pictures and specifications

Specifications

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.

System requirements

• PC with installed OS Windows XP or Vista, with a USB 1.1 (or better 2.0) port; Mac OS X 10.4.8 or higher.
• 20 MB of free space on hard drive.
• 256 MB of RAM

The service life of displays and their ribbon cables has been enhanced by making the screens embedded in the keytops motionless—it’s only the transparent caps that are pressed.

Every button on the keyboard (or, more precisely, a module with a moving cap, a microchip and a display) is easy to remove in order to clean or replace.

Configurator software allows for programming every button to reproduce a sequence of symbols and editing the image separately for each layout.

Price

A Whopping $462 (approx 371 Euro)

Hmm, come to think of it, wouldn’t be bad if I got one for a gift

Presenting to you the Nokia Morph Phone Concept. This phone is like no other concept phone considering the technology its based on and its ever-green color.

The basic ideology behind the Nokia Morph is the use of nanotechnology based flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces. These new materials should enable Nokia to make a cell phone which is flexible, easy to use and can be folded into any shape.

Much like what we saw in Nokia 888, the Nokia Morph will be able to transform in any shape ranging from a circular bracelet mode to a landscape mode.

According to UnwiredView, the Nokia Morph concept was developed by Nokia research center in cooperation with Cambridge University and is on display at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Google2Go (Google Portal for Windows Mobile Devices)

Google2Go is a new mobile software application for Windows Mobile Devices which creates a portal to all Google services on your mobile just like Yahoo!Go.

The application was released by Bryan Burkholder from The Tech Turf and works with devices running on the Windows Mobile Professional 6 Operating System.I have no experience with Windows Mobile Devices myself but watching the Google2Go-in-action video shared by Google Blogoscoped I can certainly say that the application is really helpful and amazing.

The application is light, fast and pretty much useful. The icons used in the application may seem familiar to you because they have been taken from the iPhone and iPod Touch devices. However in the future, we may get to see a whole new UI with new icons and features.

Requirements to run Google2Go

• Windows Mobile Professional 6 (touch screen capable)
• Windows Mobile .Net framework 2.0
• Data connection (Wifi will work also)
• Screen Resolution of 320×240 (recommended)

Features

Access to all Google mobile services including:

• Google Web/Image Search
• Google Local Search
• Gmail
• Google Calendar
• Google Reader
• Google Docs
• Picasa
• Google News
• Google Notes

Other features

• Amazon
• eBay
• Weather.com
• Wikipedia
• Dictionary/Thesaurus

The application does not require an install. Just download it and run it on your phone.

Download

Google2Go

Well, today we have two important news updates from Google regarding two new Google Services, one of which has been launched already and the other one shall soon be made publicly available in the coming months.

The first Google service we are talking about here is the reincarnated form of JotSpot as Google Sites. JotSpot was acquired by Google in October 2006 which makes Google Sites a project of over 1 year so I guess we should expect something good out of it.

Google Sites is a basic application offered to Google Apps users so the main theme of Google Sites is collaboration, productivity and organized work just like other services offered by Google Apps. Google Sites is a sort of Wiki for users who don’t know how to code.

Users can easily centralize information such as presentation, videos, document, photos, calendars on a web page without having any prior knowledge of HTML. Plus the site can be shared among co-workers, friends or family so everyone can add their valuable piece of information to it.

The other much-anticipated Google service we are talking about here is Google Health. Google Health has been in the spotlight since leaked images of the service-in-development rushed through the blogosphere. However, Google has finally confirmed that such a service does exist and we will be seeing more of it in the coming future.

Google Health will focus on providing individual health profiles for every user. Users will be able to import and save their medical records, find a doctor, get medication and keep a complete online log of health in a much more organized manner.