New Media Exploration: Optimus Maximus

It was a few months ago that a friend showed me the Optimus Maximus keyboard. Designed by the Russian studio Art. Lebedev, the Optimus Maximus is designed with absolute user customizability in mind.


So what sets this keyboard apart from the ordinary $10 office variety? Well, every single key has a tiny OLED screen inside of it (48 x 48 pixels, about the size of a Win XP icon). This means that you can customize not only the functionality of any key you want, but its appearance as well. You can change your keys' font and color, or you can use pictures taken from the internet or drawn yourself. From what I can tell, the keyboard comes with a micro SD chip to save your configurations to, so you can take your layout with you to the office (provided that "the office" has an Optimus Maximus, which isn't highly likely at this point).

Art. Lebedev has put up a pretty sweet basic simulator/demo of the product here, which is definitely worth checking out. As you can see, when you press and hold shift, all of the keys would dynamically update to show new symbols. Additional configurations are previewed as well; you can see alternate letter-based schemes for languages such as French and Spanish, as well as a layout with asian characters and even sample image-based control layouts for Photoshop and Counter-strike. The photoshop layout in particular looks like it would be awfully useful in MAT classes at MCC, as it would almost entirely remove the need to memorize hotkeys.

As cool as this keyboard sounds, it does have some flaws.

Firstly, it's expensive. Depending on where you get it, the high-end model costs between $1,000 and $1,800. There is an alternative plan: you can buy a cheap version of the keyboard for $450 that has only a single OLED key, and then replace the other "static" keys for $10 apiece as you need them; still, this is a lot of money for a novelty keyboard.

Secondly, according to several reviewers the keys just don't feel right. Complaints include that they're too large, high resistance makes typing tiring, and that the lack of space between keys cause too many mistypes.

I liked this video review because it gives the viewer a good idea of what the keyboard can do, but it also talks about the keyboard's shortcomings.

Even with its noticeable drawbacks, the concept is very appealing, both to geeks and to users that want to make their computers easier to use. If Art. Lebedev can find a way to make their product cheaper and improve the issues with their keys, a revised version of the Optimus Maximus could become a dominant figure in tomorrow's technological market.

New Media Exploration: Online Applications

From the examples that Karl showed us in class and from what I have seen online, I think that web applications are going to gain a stronger presence on the web. The two sites that I thought were interesting are very different from each other. One is very basic looking site that has some cool creative features and the other is more of an online application for editing images and more.


The first site is called TYPEFLASH, it is a cool site where you can create customized text or even a whole letter and send it via email to yourself or anyone. The level of customization is amazing, and surprisingly easy to use. The application of sorts, allows for customization of style, color, background,... I think it really shows the power that Flash has to offer web users in any field of use.


Picnik is the name of the second site. I don't know as much about this site as I would like to, but I know that it is an online application, built in Flash, that allows you to edit digital photos. I have used it briefly and I know that it is powerful and is basically a web-based Photoshop. It is extremely powerful, from what I can tell, I think that I would use it for creating cool emails or notes.

All I know is that the web is going to change, I think for the better. Online tools will become more powerful and websites will be more interactive and engaging. I also think that we are just starting to explore the potential for web-applications. I have learned a lot from this class and I definitely want to learn more. Thanks for all the help!!