keyboard
Work
9:00AM Angus Kidman | Lenovo’s newly-released 400s notebook includes double-height Esc and Delete keys to make them easier to access. How could that idea be extended? More »
Which Keyboard Keys Would You Make Bigger?
9:00AM Angus Kidman | Lenovo’s newly-released 400s notebook includes double-height Esc and Delete keys to make them easier to access. How could that idea be extended? More » 
Work
Use Caps Lock For Hand-Friendly Text Navigation
4:00AM The How-To Geek | After we showed you how to disable the Caps Lock key, reader Philipp wrote in with his unbelievably geeky use for the otherwise pointless key—by using it to help navigate while editing text. More »
Fix
NumLocker Disables The Caps Lock Key
4:00AM The How-To Geek | Windows only: Tiny application NumLocker disables the Caps, Num and Scroll Lock keys from an easy-access menu in the system tray. More »
Work
BlockInput Locks Down Your Mouse And Keyboard
5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: If you need to lock input to your computer temporarily, skip applications that require to you key in fancy combinations to unlock things. BlockInput unlocks itself. The options for BlockInput are simple. You select which hotkey you want to use to activate the program and how many seconds you want to the application to lock the input from your mouse and keyboard. The default is CTRL+Q and 5 seconds, presumably so the first time you test the program you don’t find yourself staring at the computer for the next half hour waiting for it to unlock. Whether you need a window of time to wipe down your mouse and keyboard with some sanitising wipes or you have a particularly sensitive application you want to make sure isn’t disturbed, BlockInput is a dead simple solution. BlockInput is freeware, Windows only. BlockInput [via gHacks] More »
Fix
Media Keyboard 2 Media Player Adds Keyboard Support To Popular Media Players
5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: Your system’s got a fancy keyboard with a host of handy media shortcut buttons, but they only work with a select few apps. Media Keyboard 2 Media Player fills in the support gap. Once installed, MK2MP acts as a middle man between your keyboard and popular media-applications like VLC, Xion, XMPlay, 1BY1, and Winamp. The application runs almost invisible to the end user, passing the keyboard command onto the application with the right trigger. You can enable and disable common media-keyboard keys for each program, and specify whether it sits in your system tray or stays incognito. If the program you need to control isn’t yet available, the application is in active development and open to suggestions for new players to be added. Looking for a new media player in general? Check out the Hive Five results for best desktop media players. Media Keyboard 2 Media Player [via gHacks] More »
Fix
Virtual Keyboard Interface Dodges Key-Loggers
3:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Sticking with trusted computers is your best bet for security, but sometimes security-unknown setups are unavoidable. Enter text with a Greasemonkey-powered virtual keyboard, though, and key-loggers are out of luck. Using a virtual keyboard isn’t an absolute guarantee against having your login and password lifted—thieves can be rather resourceful, of course—but it is a good defence against hardware and basic software key-loggers. More than 22 keyboard layouts are available, making it easy to take advantage of that great Slovenian password you’ve been dying to use. Virtual Keyboard Interface is a Greasemonkey script, works wherever Greasemonkey does. Virtual Keyboard Interface [via DownloadSquad] More »
Fix
CrazyLittleFingers Rewards Your Toddler’s Curiosity
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | CrazyLittleFingers is a keyboard locking application. Unlike some of the previous keyboard lockers we’ve covered, CrazyLittleFingers corresponds the keystroke to a picture and sound related to the key. Press L and you see a picture of a lion. Press R and you see a movie of a rooster. Keys that have no symbolic link for children like the page up and page down keys produce rising and falling guitar sounds. Numbers show the number on the screen. The only caveat is that it doesn’t lock the mouse. This is fine on a single monitor setup, because you can’t click through the images or access the start menu so clicking wouldn’t accomplish anything. On a multiple monitor setup however it only locks the primary screen, the mouse is still effective on the other screens. It would be nice if the program did a simple poll to see if other monitors were active and darkened/disabled them. Still if your toddler isn’t a proficient mouse user it should work fine. CrazyLittleFingers is freeware, Windows only. Photo by John A. Ward. CrazyLittleFingers [Donation Coder: New Applications for New Year Contest] More »
Communicate
Touch-Screen Keyboard Shown In Android ‘Cupcake’ Video
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | A new video shows off the primary features of the all-touch-screen keyboard in the next update of Google’s Android mobile platform, code-named Cupcake. The video shows the touch-screen keyboard running on HTC/T-Mobile’s G1 handset, but other manufacturers are reportedly considering an all-touch handset to be run on Android. You’ll also see the newest updates to the G1’s capabilities, including video recording and, for the browser, inline finding and selective copy and paste. More »
Work
TeamPlayer Enables Multiple Input Devices
9:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: TeamPlayer allows you to use multiple mice and keyboards on a Windows based system. Under normal circumstances you can plug multiple USB mice in, but moving the two simultaneously will result in Windows struggling to decide which input to use for the single cursor on the screen. TeamPlayer is designed for a group environment where multiple people will be interacting with the same computer. Each mouse is assigned a unique coloured cursor to identify it. When testing on my system my primary PS/2 mouse was assigned red, and the secondary USB mouse was assigned blue. There are two small caveats with Teamplayer: More »
Organise
