Solomonia Archive: Cool tech of the Day

Monday, December 6, 2004

I just want to know if they make an ergonomic version.

Israel21c: Meet Israel's virtual keyboard that fits in your pocket

Amichai Turim, co-founder and CTO of Jerusalem start-up VKB, glances at the alphabetical keyboard on his cell phone disparagingly. "After you reach a certain point, you just get fed up typing messages on these tiny buttons," he says. He is right.

Typing words into either a cellular phone or a PDA is time-consuming and laborious at the best of times, and at the worst, in this era of instant communication, annoying and tedious. Moreover, as the pressure is on manufacturers to create smaller and smaller electronic items with more and more functionality, so the keyboard too is constantly shrinking in size.

Turim believes he has the answer. VKB has developed a virtual keyboard that enables mobile communication device users to project an infra red image of a normal-sized Qwerty keyboard onto any flat surface, and type in naturally whatever information is required. The $199 virtual keyboard, which employs laser technology, can be used anywhere, from a train, to a plane, to a company booth, a factory, or even an operating theater...

Posted by Solomon at 4:18 PM on Monday, Dec 6, 2004 | Comments (3)
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3 Comments

#1 Michael Savoy | December 7, 2004 3:17 AM

I would have been most impressed with this as being something so technogically advanced as if it were transported back from the future had I already not seen this exact same product two years ago at that time introduced by a German company.

#2 Michael Savoy | December 7, 2004 3:17 AM

#3 Solomon | December 7, 2004 9:15 AM

That wouldn't have been Siemens SPLS would it?

In May 2002, the company got its first real breakthrough, when multinational giant Siemens agreed to handle European sales for the keyboard, and its subsidiary, Siemens Procurement & Logistics Services (SPLS) became the exclusive distributor of the keyboard in Germany. Under the terms of the agreement, Siemens invested a small sum of money in engineering.