Digital Keyboard – Missing the e-Paper Boat

Here’s a cool piece of technology: a fabric keyboard that can be turned over to reveal an alternate set of keys. Cool!

I guess the engineers didn’t get the memo about e-Paper, my favorite upcoming technology. That same keyboard could have been developed to have a fully dynamic keyboard where the keys could be swapped on the fly, much like a touch pad. Such a space-saving (and low power usage) device would be ideal for laptops and has tons of potential in various data entry applications.

Imagine a device where you can customize the keyboard for your clients depending on the needs of the application. When you click on the media player, the keyboard would switch to media controls. When you click on an excel sheet, a number pad shows up. Or maybe part of it could be a track pad. This invention could have used (and probably some day will appear on) e-Paper.

Take my idea a step further, and you end up with a tablet PC with a full-touch interface, much like the iPhone. Although, I think the ability for e-paper to refresh quickly enough to replace conventional screens is still a few generations away, e-paper as a computer peripheral is just a great idea. See why I think e-Paper has so much potential?