keyboard

Put a keyboard in your pocket, $29.99 shipped

Smartphone keyboards are fine for composing short e-mails and maybe tweaking the occasional Word document. But if you want to get any serious work done on your device, fuhgeddaboudit. Your thumbs don't deserve that kind of punishment. Instead, reach for the iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard, which serves up a full-size set of QWERTY keys and then folds up slim enough to slip into your pocket.

The Stowaway normally lists for $149.99 (ouch!), but Amazon has it on sale for just $29.99--which qualifies it for the store's free Super Saver Shipping. Just make sure you … Read more

Create a keyboard shortcut to paste plain text

Last week I described the PureText utility that lets you paste plain text in Word and other applications via a keyboard shortcut. You can create a macro to get the same functionality in Word and Excel, without having to download anything.

(Note that the original post of this tip reported that PureText required that you click its icon in your system tray before you press the shortcut keys to paste plain text. This is true only if you open the destination app after the material you want to paste has been added to the clipboard. If both the source and … Read more

The most useful keyboard shortcuts you probably don't know about

Mice, bah!

Every time you lift your hands off the keyboard to select something with your mouse, you're lengthening your workday. I don't need any double-blind studies to convince me that keyboard shortcuts save time: I experience it first-hand whenever I learn a new key combination that accomplishes some task that I thought required a mouse click. Or two. Or three.

Here are some of my favorite multi-keystroke time-savers.

Keystrokes for Working in Windows I wish I had a nickel for every time I clicked the little folder icon in the Quick Launch toolbar to open the My … Read more

The quick and simple way to paste plain text

"If you want something done right, do it yourself."

"Why reinvent the wheel?"

That sums up a conversation I had with a coworker after I told him about the macro I created in Microsoft Word that converts my Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut into one that pastes text from a Web site, some other app, or elsewhere, minus the formatting, images, and any other nontext stuff. The fact is, I rarely want to paste anything but the text, and I want it in the format of the file it's being added to, not the format of the … Read more

Underexposed blog: Links of the day

Canon Hood ET-155 - $840 - I guess anybody who can afford Canon's 400mm f/2.8 lens can afford an $840 lens hood to go with it. It's cheaper on B&H, though. Moose News Blog ? helpful Nikon D3, D300 videos - A link to some detailed Nikon videos on using D3 and D300 SLRs. Naked light--Mac OS X Image Editor - An attempt to revolutionize image editing. for Mac OS X, in beta 0.1 right now. Photodoto ?DSLRs, sensor dust, and NASA - Sensor dust on narrow-aperture photos taken from the Space Shuttle. I … Read more

'Optimus Maximus' gets minimus price (sort of)

We really don't like posting about the "Optimus Maximus" keyboard. There, we said it. Despite our admitted fascination with odd keyboards, the hype over this one got out of hand long ago.

Still, we aim to please here at Crave. So even though we've resisted posting every incremental detail about this Russian-made peripheral, we feel obligated to pass along this report that the Op-Max can be had for much less than the original $1,564 price--$462.27 to be exact, according to Gizmodo.

The difference in functionality is more than cosmetic, however: Instead of 113 … Read more

A keyboard without the keys

How's this for weirdness: A keyboard with no keys. No, it's not an invention from Yuri Geller or any other spoon-bending psychics. It's a real product called the "OrbiTouch" that has been around for a few years but is enjoying some renewed attention, perhaps because navigation by way of the cliched Minority Report touch screen has yet to become a reality.

Rather than typing with the usual keys, it works with two domes that can be maneuvered into quadrants of letters, numbers, and symbols, according to Dvice. The magic orbs then can supposedly be slid … Read more

Folding keyboards aren't just for bands

The idea of a roll-away or fabric keyboard has never appealed to us, even if they do glow in the dark. We'd worry that they'd never lie completely flat, especially after being crumpled in a coat pocket for days on end, and the resulting bumps and wrinkles would drive us nuts. At the same time, the folding keyboards we've seen often have some kind of awkward design that hardly seemed to be the most efficient or elegant use of space.

That's why the "Matias Folding Keyboard" was so striking, as it appears virtually indistinguishable … Read more

Wolf King's bongo keyboard

As sick as it undoubtedly seems, we're all about keyboards here at Crave, whether they be of the computing or musical variety (or both). And we're particularly fond of those that aren't afraid to break the mold, figuratively and literally.

Wolf King's new gaming keyboard falls somewhere in between those last two categories. Proposed in FCC filings, the weird creation has seven hotkeys and blue backlights but has a relatively small 14.3- by 3.4-inch footprint, according to Gizmodo. The gear maker is no stranger to unusual designs, but this one goes disturbingly further than … Read more