Down with laptops! Jaymis and I have both taken up SFF PCs as live tools, so we can bring some serious iron to gigs with multiple video outputs. Now, the only problem: laptops have these handy QWERTY keyboards attached. SFF PCs (and Mac minis and such) mean bringing your own keyboard and display.

I’ve been looking for the perfect keyboard to turn this into an advantage: why not a super-savvy QWERTY keyboard that’s a performance instrument in its own right? I think I’ve found it:

CES 2007: Luxeed Interactive Keyboard [Chip Chick]

Each key can be programmed with colors, interactively, to demarcate areas or individual keys. That should allow color feedback for keyboard shortcuts for your favorite programs (hello After Effects, Final Cut, etc.), but could also be programmed to make it easier to trigger video clips and effects using the keyboard in a performance. And responsive, live music skins could let you “pimp my VJ rig” to add a little bling to your next gig.

Most important for an SFF rig is having a basic mouse capability built into the keyboard; it looks like this keyboard (like many multimedia keyboards) sports cursor capabilities via a controller at the bottom right.

The Korean maker Luxeed hasn’t said anything yet about pricing or availability. Even if it doesn’t show up here in the US, maybe I can pick one up on my next Asian romp.

Any other tips for good QWERTY keyboards for live rigs? Must-have: some kind of mouse function. Nice to have: wireless, lighting.

The blogosphere this week is all abuzz about the supposedly desire-inducing Upravlator. The awkwardly-named hardware comes from Art Lebedev, the mysterious designer who first promised the Optimus Keyboard, a unique “design concept” with tiny color displays under each key. That indeed sounds cool, but instead, after months of delays and promises, the shipping product turned out to be the Optimus Three, with three little displays that double as buttons. Full keyboard with displays: interesting. Three display buttons with no real function: erm? Instead of spending about US$150 on an Optimus Three, why not a Nintendo DS Lite? Which do you think would be more useful?

This week, we get the Upravlator. Imagine a powerful interactive piece of hardware that connects to your computer’s video port and dynamically displays, in full color, everything from interface widgets to graphics and video to dynamic Web content, all completely customizable for your own needs. Sounds unbelievably useful, right? Good thing we already have such a device: it’s called a monitor. Want touch input? It’s called a touchscreen monitor. Now take that monitor, divide it up into a tiny 4×3 grid, eliminating a significant portion of its usable space. Replace the full resolution of the touchscreen with 12 buttons (thousands of levels of resolution reduced to a dozen). Put it in a big bulky case, wait until 2007 to ship it (presumably for some enormous price), and require developers to rewrite software to use it. Now you’re getting the picture:

Upravlator Product Announcement [artlebedev.com official site]
The Upravlator unveiled [DVguru]
Art Lebedev explains Upravlator to five year olds, no one else [Engadget]
(and, like a zillion other blogs)

Worst of all, the Upravlator takes up lots of desk real estate and a free VGA port — two things better dedicated to a real monitor, especially when touchscreen monitors are coming down in price.

The dynamic keyboard remains a cool product. It may come in at an astronomical price, but the concept is good: take the physical feedback and ease of a great hardware input device (keyboard) and add dynamic visuals to make it more flexible. By contrast, the Upravlator and the Optimum Mini Three are useful neither as displays nor as input devices and actually reduce efficiency. We’ll wait for the Optimus-113 keyboard, if it can actually ship.

Don’t be too sad, though. You want gadget lust? Chumby’s got your gadget lust. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this homebrewed, open source, hackable gadget soon, because Team CDMo desperately wants one right now. Let’s compare:

I don’t think they’ve done it just to spite Peter and CDMu readers, but not 3 days after the “is it vapourware” conversation, Thinkgeek have unboxed the first step towards Optimus.

It’s still not yet shipping, nor OSX or Linux compatible, and not really in the realm of truly useful gear ($169? How about a whole second or third 17″ monitor?), but it’s exciting news nevertheless. This device isn’t anywhere near the interaction leap of the multitouch demos we’ve been seeing, or even that daft “desktop metaphor enriching” thing, but it’s still extremely exciting that one of these thought experiments is actually becoming a reality.

There’s the obvious advantage for VJs: Triggering clips by hitting the key which displays the corresponding thumbnail, ditto for filters and transition modes, all with a stage-friendly backlit interface? Sign me up! Of course, if you want more than 3 buttons it would probably be cheaper and more functional to just get an LCD touchscreen for now, but for me this product is just as important for what it symbolises. This is the first step to those vapourware devices becoming real, and when every surface is covered with tiny displays, everyone is going to need some compelling visual content to cover those surfaces.

My fellow visualists, our time approaches. Don’t let someone else make the big money selling Matrix screensavers for all those Optimuses– Optimou– Optimii– things.

Thomas Dolby’s blog continues to induce rabid gear lust. After drooling over Mr. Dolby’s live rig and repurposed vintage MIDI controller, we now get a glimpse at Johnny DeKam’s live video rig. (Kevin Johnsrude caught this one, and reminds us that “envy is one of the seven deadly sins.” Better keep that in mind.)

Actually, we can divide this into “things to envy” and “things to note.”

Open Labs is slowly teasing out the specs of a new portable music device called the MiKo, promising a complete portable workstation for everything from DJing to music production to VJing and . . . podcasting? The company won’t make a full announcement until the NAMM trade show later this month in Anaheim; in the meantime they’re releasing weekly updates, so it’s a little like watching a press release as a miniseries. But you can make a smart guess based on Open Labs’ previous products, all of which involve Windows PCs packed into music keyboard form factors. If you read the site carefully, you’ll also notice Open Labs says it has an audio interface and VGA port, and calls it a “standalone home theater PC.” I’ve also put together some additional specs on the MiKo after the break.

Two- or three-octave keyboards from M-Audio? Whatever. Try the “original” mini-keyboard: the toy piano. Doron Altaratz hacked a toy piano for use as a video controller: play keys, and this visual organ responds with smoothly-shifting visuals. (VJs will know Doron as the alter-ego of VJ Sputnik.)
For more on IMC Expo plus pictures, see the CDM show report.