keys

Inspired by Tony Targonski's wonderful heat map of the dirt distribution in his keyboard, I decided to take all my keys off and give my own keyboard a good cleaning yesterday. (Honestly, everyone should do it once a year, unless you've got some crazy, futuristic, self-cleaning device.)

As I painstakingly scraped off all of the gunk, I learned two things. No. 1: I'm a proud PC gamer. Most of the dirt was concentrated under W, A, S, and D. No. 2: I love my keyboard and I hate my mouse. My keyboard provides endless creative potential, while my mouse helps me click on stupid links. I never clean my mouse.

In order for we keyboard lovers to make the most of our wonderful input devices, we need good launchers, i.e. apps that let us run programs or load Web sites without clicking that silly mouse.… Read more

Spying on other people's PCs can be such a hassle. For one thing, you've got to find a way to surreptitiously install key-logging software or other surveillance hardware. But the clever blokes at U.K.-based Spy Warehouse have come up with a practical alternative: Why not give the subject a new keyboard already equipped for espioniage?

Its "Covert Keylogger Keyboard" is a Microsoft board outfitted with a 2MB storage device that SCI FI Tech says can track up to 2 million keystrokes. There are just two problems: Only one of them has been made--for 215 … Read more

Perhaps more than any other piece of office equipment, the computer keyboard has been constantly morphed to keep its operators' hands out of the doctor's office. In the perennial battle against RSI, we've seen versions that break in two, glow in the dark and even skip the keys altogether. But instead of the hardware options, others continue to pursue solutions in the keys themselves--and a generation that goes beyond the QWERTY alternatives may be just beginning.

New Standard Keyboards, for instance, has developed an alphanumeric version that includes only 53 keys rather than the usual 104, according to … Read more

Military-grade USB drives are nothing new on Crave, which has even seen models designed to withstand nuclear explosions. But this particular version would be as useful in the next Cold War as it would be in the battlefield.

Not only is the "IronKey" secured in a rugged metal case sealed with "epoxy-based potting compound," according to PCLaunches, but the battle-ready drive has an additional feature worthy of opening scenes from the old Mission Impossible TV series--an encryption chip that self-destructs after 10 wrong passwords are tried. It will also destroy all its data if someone tries … Read more

Go figure. We thought that legendary luxury goods purveyor S.T. Dupont would have better things to do than make an occasional computer peripheral. But apparently the palladium memory stick it introduced earlier this year wasn't just a one-time thing.

In between crafting museum-quality pens and lighters, the Parisian institution is continuing to forge USB keys such as those from its "Cote d'Azur" collection. The newest models are made of palladium and a choice of three lacquered colors, each bearing the company's signature diamond-head pattern.

We don't necessarily object to the company keeping up … Read more

Even with all the useless items Crave encounters routinely, this has got to be one of the sillier examples. Which is why we feel compelled to write about it, of course.

It's a USB lighter. That's right, a flash drive that you can also use to fire up a stogie (or whatever). The German-made "Memlite," as it's called, has a 512MB memory key that pops out of this unlikely combo gadget for those frequent times when you just have to store some digital data while getting a smoke. As Everything USB notes, it's unclear … Read more

You've got to hand it to eKey, quite literally. As biometric security technology becomes increasingly mainstream, companies have had to work overtime trying to figure out ways to get a leg (or an arm) up on the competition. So where fingerprint scanning is concerned, eKey had a novel thought: Why limit a system to just one finger?

Its "Bio-View" system actually makes use of three fingers, each with a different task--one to unlock the door, a second to control the alarm and the third to send an emergency alert if necessary, according to Cedia News. (We can … Read more

So here's the deal: If there's going to be any meaningful backlash against touch screens, it may require some innovative thinking on the part of button proponents. But we hope that it won't depend on the likes of Vertu and their $310,000 phones.

Nokia, at least, appears to be doing its part with a new design for the "7500 Prism" handset destined for the Chinese market for about $290, according to Gizmodiva. Its contribution to the cause? Triangular buttons that form a diamond pattern on the keypad.

We were just relieved to find that … Read more

OK, we admit to being somewhat harsh at times on USB keys and sticks, especially when they appear to be getting too big for their gold-plated britches. But our beef mostly has been with their necessity, or lack thereof.

None of that would apply to AMD's latest invention if it does just half the things the company says it can do. The "ATI TV Wonder 600" USB dongle promises to turn your laptop into a DVR, even for high-definition stuff, and you can do even more with AMD's new PC card for desktops. As CrunchGear notes, … Read more