Last 22 June I wrote that ‘In my 63-year lifetime so far, there’s been major technological advancement. It’s been massive. Monumental. Unprecedented, too. Arguably the era of greatest and fastest tech advancement ever [1]’. Five weeks later, my opinion’s the same. Nowadays tech advances are so incessant and amazing, it’s easy to be inured to them. And I think I am. But sometimes I come across something so astounding I can’t help but sit up and take notice. And so it was yesterday when I saw an ad for the Celluon CL850 Laserkey Projection Keyboard [2]. Essentially a palm-sized unit powered by USB or mains projects a laser QWERTY keyboard onto any flat non-reflective surface, and this virtual keyboard sends your typing wirelessly by Bluetooth radio to your nearby computer or smartphone. The keyboard’s full-sized, and it supports typing speed of 400 characters per minute (i.e. over six per second) with error rates similar to a standard physical keyboard. There’s no tactile sense of depressing keys, of course, but you can set it to make a small click when a virtual key’s touched. Here’s a 2-minute YouTube clip about it [3]. It’s selling for about A$130. Will I buy one? No – but that doesn’t stop me marvelling at the technology. Talk about having innovation at your fingertips. Ho hum.
