Gearfuse

Anyone who knows me well enough will remember my obsession with BMX and the 1980s. These QWERTY grips for your bike? They remind me of something a dorkier Bob Haro would have used back on his first Freestyler. Not only do they match well with the white or black coloring that’s available, but at $8 a pair, they’re also some of the most inexpensive grips on the market right now. Consider a pair the next time you open your parents tool shed and rediscover your old Dyno VFR.

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It’s official – laptops can’t get any smaller. If they did, reading and typing on them would be an impossible task. I thought the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was small, but the IMOVIO iKIT takes the cake. The cupcake, that is.

This thing is unnecessarily too small. It’s dimensions are 95 x 65 x 15.5 mm and it weighs almost half the weight of a Nintendo DS Lite and 20g less than an iPhone, so it’s pretty damn tiny. It also manages to pack a full QWERTY keyboard and a 2.8″ QVGA screen on this thing. For $170, you’re not getting much of a computer. It runs on a Marvell PXA270 312MHz CPU, uses a trimmed-down Linux OS and has 64MB of RAM, so don’t expect a powerhouse in the palm of your hand. For some reason this little thing even has Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11b/g WiFi and can amazingly sustain enough juice to keep it going for three hours. Seriously, do laptops need to be this small?

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One might think the Google G1 is lacking in the apps department, but that’s not true at all. It turns out that a virtual keyboard should be released sometime in Q1 of 2009 for Google’s Android. So, if for some reason the QWERTY keyboard on the G1 doesn’t do it for you, you can wait around for the virtual keyboard. That way, you can pretend your G1 is an iPhone.

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A newly released patent reveals a new handheld device from Nokia which comes with a removable QWERTY keypad. The patent describes a UMPC device with dual touchscreens and a keyboard that sits on top of one of the screens until it is needed.

They keyboard will slide out when needed for texting or web surfing. When the keyboard is removed, the second display adds on to the first display as one large interface. This patent reveals what might possibly be one cool smart phone. — Andrew Dobrow

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Nothing is ever concrete until you see it in this world of Photoshop renderings. Now that we can see the recently announced Xbox 360 QWERTY Controller in the wild, we can offer a full confirmation on Microsoft’s announcement. This is the first public viewing of the QWERTY text input device for Xbox.

The announcement coincides with Microsoft’s announcement that MSN Messenger will soon be available from the Xbox dashboard. The controller will allow for easy text input without the need of a full keyboard. (more…)

With the announcement that MSN Messenger will now be integrated into the Xbox 360 dashboard, Microsoft has also announced a QWERTY controller for hassle-free text input for the chat program. The 47-keyed controller plugs into the normal controller via the headphone jack. While it might be a little clunky looking, it sure as hell beats having to lug a full keyboard around.

The Microsoft dashboard update, which will take place on May 7, will allow up to six chat windows to be open in addition to the normal events. The only thing released about this controller yet is the photos so no pricing, availability, or even product name info is available yet. (more…)

Motorola has just released their brand new Q q9. So what is it? It’s basically an upgraded/updated Q with a new design and Windows Mobile 6. So what does the Q q9 offer?

One feature is the very nice screen. Whether you are indoors or out in the wilderness (escaping your computer chamber), you will be able to read what it says. In terms of actual hardware, the 256MB of onboard memory ensures that you won’t be stalling the OS anytime soon. The Q q9 also has HSDPA connectivity so that when you want to listen/watch your media, there is no problem whatsoever. Ergonomically, the new design is optimized to allow for better application access through shortcuts while not sacrificing the QWERTY keyboard’s benefits. The Q q9 is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2007. –Nik Gomez

Motorola Q q9 and Q gsm Announced[via Mobiledia]

This new keyboard definitely confuses for a second. It is the New Standards Keyboard created by John Parkinson because “things that make no sense have always bugged me.” At first glance, this looks even worse than a QWERTY keyboard, but when you study key placement, it actually makes some sense. All of the alphabet keys are in alphabetical order, the arrow keys are directly in the center, each thumb has its very own space key, and there are only half as many keys here than on a QWERTY keyboard.

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