Spherical Keyboards?

Jesse Middleton asks: "I was wondering if anyone knew of an ergonomic keyboard that is a ball shape? Someone told me about it, but I can't seem to find it. I would really be interested in it. In otherwords, it is shaped like a ball and you sit it on your desk and elevate your hands and type sideways. Any help would be appreciated!"

Tired arms...

[therealmoose]

It seems to my that your arms would get very tired if you used one of these for a long time, considering there is essentially nothing to rest your arms upon. Holding arms in the air for a few hours while manipulating fingers at >60WPM would get very old very fast.

Re:Tired arms...

[Isosonys]

Not only your arms. So with a round keyboard I dont have to worrie about the cat on it. But what happens when the cat finds out the keyboard can roll around?

Oh, Cthulu!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Man, I havn't had my tentacles on a shperical keyboard since Randall Carter was alive!

Lemme get this straight...

[GreyWolf3000]

...you want a keyboard.

The requirement of this keyboard is that it be shaped like...a...ball?

Well guys, you asked for an Ask Slashdot that couldn't be solved by a google.com search. Be careful what you wish for...

This?

[Anonymous Coward]

This? [safetype.com]

Not spherical, but you type sideways. /. [slashdot.org]

Re:This?

[Omega Hacker]

This keyboard seems to suffer from the rather fundamental issue of solving one problem while creating others (which they accuse all their competitors of repeatedly):

In order to use this keyboard, you have to counteract gravity. They have no built-in provision for anything like a wrist-rest, forcing the user to keep their arms elevated (much higher than a normal keyboard, btw, necessitating significant changes in desk, chair, and posture anyway) without any support. Even if you managed to kludge together a set of wrist rests that don't get in the way and feel horrible after 8 hours, you still have to fight gravity in your fingers. At all times while typing, your fingers have to be pulled upwards by your muscles in order to keep from falling to the next key down.

Besides, it looks stupid ;-)

How about

[Smidge204]

How about this [thecraftstudio.com] rather unique solution? No tired arms here!

=Smidge=

Re:How about

[lastninja]

best thing is it won't void the warranty.

Baby Ball Solution

[Optical Voodoo Man]

I found this [kidsdomain.com] solution that I thought was great. Even if it didn't have keys per say, the description said:

Knowledge Adventure presents a whole new concept to the Baby Software world with JumpStart Baby with Baby Ball. The ball is big and sits on the desk in front of your child. Rather than clicking a mouse or striking a key on the keyboard baby pushes down on the oversized ball and gets the same effect.

I had this image in my mind of my boss walking into my office, while I'm not just posting to Slashdot, but doing it moving a Teddy bear around by pressing on this big baby ball on my desk with a big, stupid smile on my face. It must be a good thing, after all a happy worker is a productive worker. Just think of my productivity increase as I make the bear run around the screen pecking out C code. Go Teddy go!

Re:Try here...

[Yottabyte84]

heh, nigeria. I bet they also wanted help moving a few million dollars out of the contry?

If you find one let me know!

[itwerx]

My boss has been telling me to get on the ball for awhile now...

Well...

[rickwood]

Whoever said this one was gonna be a hard one to google away was right.

However, you might try http://www.keyalt.com/kkeybrdp.htm [keyalt.com] for a fairly complete selection of ergonomic keyboards and related hardware.

You could also check out the Keyboard Google Directory Entry [google.com].

Better still

[gruntvald]

how about the orb from Woody Allens "Sleeper" ?

Not a current product, but

[mhesseltine]

I did find a link to an old ball shaped typewriter [waldonet.net.mt](from a google link). While there doesn't seem to be a currently available product, this idea and one of those flexible rubber keyboards [man-machine.com] might be a good starting point.

I can come close

[0x0d0a]

Before I start, I'm not sure you want a true sphere. It seems that such a design would make you move your fingers a very large distance to hit the proper key, and when pushing down, would get a narrow hole, easy to accidently push another key. This would also necessitate large gaps between keys, or else the keys would ram into each other when pressed (unless flexible keys or some wildly different approach was taken).

It seems like a better idea would be making the *interior* of the ball be the keyboard, have a hole for your hands, and possibly make the thing transparent. It'd minimize hand movement -- your hands stay in one place, and the keyboard spreads out from that point. Hell, heat the sphere and you can avoid those cold "typing fingers" in the winter. :-) That being said, lets see what I can do for you.

First, you could use this [ergonomicresource.com], this [ids2.com], or this [ergonomicresource.com] slid at such an angle that the keyboard approximates the sides of a sphere.

Second, you could use one of the many keyboards that look like this [superinventos.com] and wrap it around a spherical object.

Third, if you want something with serious hack value, modify a idea like this [optics.org] to work from the angle needed to be typing on a curved surface.

Re:Can you imagine...

[Chiggy_Von_Richtoffe]

Yes, but the real question is how will this revolutionise the entire pr0n industry... imagine a pair of these -comes in two styles "blue" and "nippleized"!!!

Are you sure this exists?

[GuyMannDude]

Someone told me about it, but I can't seem to find it. I would really be interested in it.

Is this "someone" a reliable person? Have you seen a picture of it? Does this "someone" have others who can back up his claim?

Needless to say, if no one here on slashdot says they've heard of such a thing I think chances are pretty good that it doesn't exist.

GMD

Re:Are you sure this exists?

[Usquebaugh]

Careful,
nobody on /. has heard of you does that mean you exist?

are you sure ...

[Raiford]

... you didn't happen to be watching Star Trek TNG or Voyager when you saw this thing maybe ?

Writehander keyboard

[FattMattP]

I believe you're thinking of the Writehander keyboard which was made in the late 70's by NewO. You can find a photograph on page six of this PDF file [billbuxton.com]. There's an old newsgroup posting that mentions it here [google.com].

Offtopic: The first link goes to Bill Buxton's web site. He's the chief scientist for Alias|Wavefront. Might be some interesting reading there if you're into 3D.

Woof!

[TheSHAD0W]

Your dog starts bugging you, so you pick up his toy ball and throw it. "Fetch!"

Then you turn back to your computer... To find his pink toy ball sitting on the desk, and realize you've just thrown him your keyboard.

Re:Woof!

[JSCarr]

My dog would take one look, see a neat spherical object on the desk, and I'd be fighting him for it. I'd never get any peace at home again: "Ball! Throw the ball! Throw the ball!" Whine, whine, fuss, fuss, ad nauseum...

was it a mouse?

[fist_187]

maybe it was a spherical mouse that just had a whole bunch of buttons... i can imagine that being much more plausible.

I know what you're talking about...

[morgan_wr]

... it's spherical, yes, but doesn't have keys. It has small depressions you rest your fingertips in, with a tiny button at the tip, pad, and nail of each. .. but I don't recall the name of the product, damnit.

Here are some more keyboards

[Lord Squirrel]

http://www.ergocube.com/pckeyboards.html

It's actually a great idea chaps

[adam arndt]

The ball would have keys on the bottom; basically qwerty but looking from above, Q and T are switched, P and Y etc as hands are now facing up. This is the position one holds a speherical object. Reaching all keys is achieved by pivoting the wrists on the flat plane, another natural move. Ball would be quite large.

Best Keyboard...

[metacosm]

http://www.worklink.net/products/kinesis.html

I don't know about the ball shaped keyboard you are looking for, but in my personal experience the best keyboard in the world is the Kinesis Contour.

It has depth setup keys (indented in a Sphere shape), non-angled keypaths, hardware based key-mappings, better placement of important keys, easy way to flip access to number keys with you right hand, and an array of other features.

It takes about two weeks to get used to it (with real practice), but once you get used to it, you will ensure one is always with you. It totally elminates pain from typing and makes it enjoyable once again for even people that have had bad wrist pain.

best keyboard ever

[tomlord]

Somewhat expensive, but well worth it:

http://www.comfortkeyboard.com

It's extraordinarilly configurable and I think you can get it to a state close to what you'd expect of a spherical keyboard.

I have mine with left and right halves widely separated, tented at very steep angles (about 80-degrees), with a kensington track ball sitting in the middle. The keyboard firmware isn't perfect, but works well enough. The trackball stands up to all manner of neglect and abuse.

I've also found it handy to mount a couple of button boxes around the keyboard (I have around 200 keys in easy reach -- roughly half bound to my favorite emacs commands) but my button box manufacturer has been a twit and their firmware is annoyingly flakey, so I don't have a specific recommendation here.