If you're bored over the weekend, you could while the hours away playing video games. Or you could build yourself a badass Arduino quadrocopter. You know, either way. [Quaduino via Make]

New gadgets are the stars of CES, but there was a ton of gear behind the scenes that was instrumental to our coverage of the event. Here's what kept us alive in Vegas.

Let's get this out of the way: MacBooks. We all use them. Except for Rosa.* It hasn't always been this way—a few of us are recent converts—but the fact of the matter is that Windows Vista couldn't handle the multitask demands of the field—running 3G while switching from Photoshop to a video editor to 15 different open tabs in Firefox, dealing with God knows what Web 2.0-related antics all the while. Maybe Windows 7 can be a great field-reporting platform, but at this point, it's all Mac.

We carried a healthy mix of Canon and Nikon (though admittedly on the high end, Nikon reigned) including the Canon 7D, Canon T1i, Nikon D3S, and a Nikon D700.

We used some great lenses too, from BorrowLenses.com, including one of our two Nikon 24-70mm f2.8, a Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 vrii, a Canon 35mm f1.8. The wide aperture lenses helped us shoot in low-light situations, and the zoom was great for picking up far-off demos, like Ballmer's unveiling of the HP slate. The video we shot with these DSLRs surprised us with its uniformly high quality, and we needed a tripod, the Manfrotto 785 Modo Maxi proved to be a videographer's dream.

When DSLRs weren't around, we toted two Canon PowerShot S90s and one PowerShot G11, all of which packed some serious punch for point and shoots.

You'd think that internet connectivity would be a given at a convention with over 100,000 gadget-lovers, but bandwidth was anything but guaranteed at this year's CES. To connect, we used a variety of 3G cards from Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, the last two of which were the most dependable of the bunch.

We also dipped our toes into the pleasant pool of 4G, first with the Clear Spot hotspot and then, briefly, with the Overdrive hotspot, both of which let several of us connect to WiMax at once. The connection cut out here and there, but when it did work, we were able to tether five machines all running at nearly 4 Mbps, with (mostly) no trouble. Clear's USB WiMax modem doesn't have drivers for Mac yet, so all of us except for the lone PC user were left to access the hotspots wirelessly.

For the most part, the Gizmodo team wielded iPhones, though AT&T's coverage was often frustrating and we had to switch to EDGE to receive calls with any reliability. This made the two newly-minted Nexus Ones and the pair of Droids in the mix all the more covetable. One of those Droids tethered like a champion all week long.

We operate under the notion that every person on the team should be able to publish a story at any time, and because of this, we just can't be waiting for the press room's connections, or someone else's camera, or a public computer to free up. All of this gear enabled us to capture the best moments of CES and to report them on a moment's notice. We don't know what we'd do without it.

Special thanks to BorrowLenses.com and also Canon and Nikon, for providing us with our camera gear; thanks to Clear for the WiMax Clear Spot, and also Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon for the 3G connections.

*while writing this, Rosa e-mailed everyone to ask what applications she should download. On her new MacBook Pro.

I don't want to say that ILM and Weta did a bad job on Avatar's visual effects, but an Atari 2600 edition of Avatar would still get most of the point across. [Penney Design via GameSetWatch via Kotaku]

The MiniGuru keyboard has three layers of functions designed to keep your fingers on the home row. Theoretically, that means you could type more efficiently. It would also mean a major overhaul to your typing technique.

Special modifier keys can be held down with a free thumb, allowing the user to cycle through layers of programmable key functionality. For example: hold down the modifier and J, K, L and ; can become arrow keys. There is also a mouse pointer in the center of the board if you choose to take this whole home key thing to the limit.

Again, the options for the keyboard are highly customizable, with changes saving to the firmware—but it's going to take a lot of convincing when this thing comes out at the end of the year. I'm set in my typing ways dammit. Don't try and change me. [Guru Board via ZDNet]

For me it was the Radio Shack TRS-80. (My family had every model up to the 4P.) Trying to load tapes to watch a little ASCII man dance in a proto-Dance Dance Revolution? Music, games, synthesis, tinkering—I was hooked.

5 inches by 3.7 inches—that's the diminutive footprint of the fully loaded conga-BM57 Core i7 motherboard.

Despite its small stature, the conga-BM57 features an impressive spec list, including a 2.66 GHz Core i7, 8GB of RAM, integrated intel graphics, 5 PCI Express lanes, 8 USB 2.0 ports, 3 SATA, 1 EIDE and Gigabit Ethernet—plus support for dual displays over VGA, LVDS, HDMI, DisplayPort or SDVO.

The price and release date are still unknown, but at this size, it would make one heck of a HTPC that could double for some gaming. [SlashGear]

I...I just don't know what to make of this Nunk on Droise performance art by Stéphane Perrin.

Simply put, the performance consists in dynamically generating noise music from the alcohol drunk by the performer during the performance. During the performance, the performer drinks alcohol and several breathalyzers are used to generate sounds and interacts with the visual. In addition, the abuse of alcohol inevitably leads to uncontrollable results and the body of the performer becomes itself a musical instrument.

Several alcohol sensors output each a voltage that depends on the alcohol content in the breath of the performer. These voltages are measured by an Arduino board and sent to a program written under OpenFrameworks that processes them and sends them through OSC (Open Sound Control) to a Pure Data patch. The patch dynamically generates sounds from the received data. In addition, the use of a microphone allows the sound emitted by one of the (un)desirable effects of the consumption of various alcohols in a very short time, namely vomiting, to be processed too by the Pure Data patch.

Yes...simple. All I know is that I want some sort of warning system where my toilet calls me up and magically plays the menacing Jaws theme when my stomach is on the verge of retaliating against my alcohol consumption. [Nunk on Droise via Make]

My love for Blu-ray players grows whenever companies add another feature that has nothing to do with Blu-ray. Now any worthwhile player is a home-entertainment hub, replacing cable box and Apple TV alike. How soon till they handle everything?

We looked at the four newly announced flagship players from the four biggest Blu-ray companies, LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony. Any self-respecting Blu-ray player today has Pandora and Picasa, and of course Netflix subscription streaming video. They also have some form of pay-per-view movie download service, from Vudu, Amazon or Roxio's CinemaNow and Blockbuster apps.

This year, though, the companies turned up the juice. LG added a built-in hard drive; Sony surprisingly built a remote-control iPhone app. And now all top Blu-ray players will go 3D. Integrated Wi-Fi was a stand-out feature last year; this year it's par.

These won't be out till the summer, and there's no pricing announced yet, but already we're excited. See, putting everything but the the kitchen sink into a firmware upgradeable $200-to-$300 box is way smarter than jamming it all inside a $1500 TV, where picture quality should be the chief concern.

What Do Blu-ray Players Still Need? Video File Support

If you want to know who will soon be putting HD media players out of business, look no further than these connected Blu-ray players. Samsung and LG won't let smaller companies steal their spot on the TV stand; my guess is that they will have amazing file compatibility at launch or slightly after. I mean, LG put in a hard drive, for God's sake. If that isn't for dumping crazy video files, I don't know what is.

The hard drive sounds nice, but it's not even necessary. With Wi-Fi connectivity and DLNA compatibility, these players should technically be able to play all your home videos, wherever they are. But they absolutely need 1080p DivX, H.264 and AVC (TS) compatibility—and the ability to read DVD disc images—in order to be considered viable HD video players.

I don't list reported file compatibilities here because I have learned that spec sheets can easily lie when it comes to supported video, especially when the combination of codec, wrapper, resolution and file size all affect readability. Until the players are shipping, their true file support is a mystery. Still, I have hope for these.

The $100 Roku is already on the ropes thanks to current Blu-ray players, since they give you what Roku does plus disc playback. The $120 Roku HD-XR hasn't yet taken advantage of its USB jack, and the company didn't announce anything at CES. If they wait too long before providing wide HD video file compatibility, that product, too, will be hurting.

If the makers of Blu-ray players get with the program, and address the need for true universal home-video playback, they will easily shove aside Asus O!Play and everything else too.

OK, not everything else. Game consoles, already bestsellers, have been actively converting non-gamers by adding streaming video services, and developing natural interfaces like the Wii's popular motion controls and the more ambitious forthcoming Xbox 360 Natal project.

Hopefully this will be the year they see the light on video support, too. The PS3 could have been the ultimate set-top box, but Sony's inability to see the commercial value of openness killed the PS3's non-gamer appeal. The Xbox is a lot closer to the ideal, but it doesn't yet support all files, and betting on HD DVD—and then not jumping to Blu despite Ballmer's frequent (and justifiable) promises—means no HD disc support, also a mistake.

Look, some of these Blu-ray players won't go all the way with file support, either. Speaking of Sony, can you imagine the king of patent royalties and DRM embrace file formats it doesn't get cash payoffs from, or could possibly be used in the service of piracy? Still, at least one great Blu-ray player will rise here. Am I dreaming? A year ago I would have thought so, but from what we all now regularly get from our cheap HD media players, my dreams are likely to come true—and soon, too.

Pundits, humanitarian organizations, and even the Haitian government haven't fully assessed the devastation on the earthquake-shattered half-island. Seen through machine eyes, yesterday is a blip; through human eyes, it defies description.

If you'd like to donate to an organization that can help, here are some places to start:

• MSF/Doctors Without Borders
• The American Red Cross International Response Fund, or text "HAITI" to 90999, which donates $10 to the same—Thanks, Complexified!

Additionally, online tech store SmallDog is matching any MSF/DWB donations up to $200. [The Big Picture]

When Allegra Fullerton got married last November, her niece was the flower girl. Like most her niece was a bit awkward going down the aisle, but Allegra's sister stood in the wings and encouraged her on. What a sweet robot.

Allegra's sister Laurel is "into robots", we're told, and decided to built the flower-blowing bot for her sister's wedding to Andy Fischer. From the pictures it looks like the bot was a hit.

The Flower Girl even took a turn on the dancefloor.

I spoke to Allegra just moments ago. She explained why she had a robot in her wedding:

I have always, always loved robots and have a collection of books, toys, and now an actual robot! How can you compete with a robot crusing down the aisle spitting out flowers on the ground? I wanted my wedding to have a playful feel and pay tribute to my upbringing (Dad and sister are both engineers) and really give a San Francisco feel to the event.

My sister built the robot and has been building robots since she was in high school. The ah ha moment for having a robot flower girl was one sunny afternoon at brunch with my fiance. I had a vision, thankfully he shared it and after a chat with my sister (who was a Mechanical Engineer Grad Student at Stanford at the time) she said she would make it happen and we went from there.

Update! Engineering Sister Laurel writes in with details of the build:

WeddingBot (or so I call it) was built for my sister, Allegra, since she didn't know any young children to act as flower child or ring bearer. I had recently finished building a water-squirting remote-controlled duck boat for a class (details at: http://www.stanford.edu/~laurelf/duck/ ) so she asked me to make her a remote-control robot that would spew flowers.

WeddingBot was mostly designed and built during my internship at Pocobor ( http://www.pocobor.com/ ) a small mechatronics consulting company in San Francisco. When I wasn't working on projects for them they were happy to let me to use their software and tools to design the circuit boards and program the bot.

The chassis of WeddingBot was pretty simple, two boxes from Daiso, some wooden columns, and a motor kit with wheels. A large computer fan with plastic ducting was used to blow flowers out of the top. The bot was powered by RC car batteries (purchased at a hobby shop) and had a circuit board I designed for translating wireless commands from the controller (sent via an xBee Pro) into motor/fan responses.

The controller was based on an old Microsoft Sidewinder joystick I've had since middle school. I took it apart and connected the button and stick position outputs to another circuit board to translate the joystick inputs into wireless commands the robot could understand.

Both the joystick and robot circuit boards had microcontrollers that I programmed in C.

Driving WeddingBot was pretty straightforward. The amount the stick was tilted forward or back determined the overall speed and the left/right position determined how much it would veer left or right at that speed. Holding the trigger button would turn on the fan so that flowers would launch out. The back button would switch left/right turn commands to make driving the robot towards you more intuitive (since your left and the robot's left are opposite in that situation). I added an extra red button that could be used to re-center the joystick if the default position somehow became skewed.

From Russia's Freezelight comes one of the most beautiful uses of long exposure I've ever seen (that is, aside from all of your slow shutter shooting challenge submissions). It's honestly just wow.

All it took was a Canon 5D, about 300 photos, and I'm guessing loads of patience to put this incredible work together. The follow-up, below, features everything I look for in a piece of art: a ghost, a giant chicken, and slow shutter flower blooming out of nothing.

[Vimeo via Random Good Stuff]

Valleywag is offering up to $100,000—yes, One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars—to anyone who can provide them with pictures or video or one hour of touching and licking with the Apple Tablet. Here's the juicy menu:

• $10,000 for bona fide pictures.
• $20,000 for video of one in action.
• $50,000 for pictures or video of Steve Jobs holding one.
• $100,000 to let us play with one for an hour.

The money will be paid after the tablet is revealed and the material is proven to be the real McCoy.

I've to say that we are all pretty excited at the idea of any Bothan spy breaking the Cupertino blockade and running away with one of the prototypes. [Valleywag]

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Labs have developed a system of "whack gestures" that could allow any phone with an accelerometer to be silenced with a punch. This is brilliant.

Tap gestures as a concept aren't totally new, but the new software promises a much lower error rate than previous solutions, as well as a much simpler philosophy. Chris Harrison, developer:

I think for whack gestures to be commercially viable only two gestures might be desired: one to silence the phone, and a second to postpone an alert, ask the caller to try again in 5 minutes or snooze an alarm.

The potential here, in you haven't noticed, is huge. Imagine the time you'll save, with this shortened call-killing routine! Not to mention the instant, visceral gratification. It would take this process:

1.) Receive call during funeral
2.) Panic, violently strike outer thigh
3.) Calm down, internalize shame
4.) Remove phone from pocket, interrupting somber moment further
5.) Switch off phone in conspicuous way, as if to apologize
6.) Sit through the shutdown jingle you totally forgot about, because who switches off their phones anymore?
7.) Continue mourning, now tinged with embarrassment

and condense it into this process:

1.) Receive call during funeral
2.) Don't panic, violently strike outer thigh.

Perfect. The project is still in research and presentation stages for the time being, though any company run by people who've owned a cellphone, ever, will license this technology. Obviously. [New Scientist]

By now, we're all painfully familiar with my repeated, personal problems with new, yellow-tinged iMacs—but luckily, our readers have taken the cause beyond one man's whining. Today is the first of (hopefully not too many) weekly iMac updates.

Can You Safely Purchase an iMac Yet?

In a word, nope.

We've received at least 15 tips to our submissionsATgizmodo.com line, all users who've received yellow-tinged iMacs since January 1st and documented the problem with photos. (And I've received twice that many personally from irate customers with whom I'm extremely sympathetic.)

It seems that, despite the extremely well-documented problem(s), Apple refuses to do the right thing and simply stop shipping these faulty iMacs out. Last I checked, the public's view of the iMac's "ultimate display" was not one with pee-like stains at the bottom. Then again, I haven't run a focus group on the matter.

And you should note, yellow screens are just one element of production problems. According to readers, firmware updates have not completely fixed other screen problems, like black outs or flickering.

Replace or Repair or Return?

I have yet to hear from someone who has successfully replaced a yellow iMac with one that's perfectly functional. That's a bad, bad, bad sign for Apple's current yield. (Hopefully, a few of you will keep attempting, so we can see if Apple gets their act together.) However, it seems that Apple has been pushing more users toward repairing their systems rather than getting them replaced. I didn't settle for getting a new product (that should be in mint condition) repaired, and imho, neither should you—in which case, some of you will be stuck only with the option to return.

As for My iMac

After being refused a replacement, my iMac stopped booting altogether. It just went dead. Unsure that I could get the inevitable next (broken) version replaced, I simply returned it.

Where Do We Go From Here?

As long as you keep demanding exchanges, checking on new iMacs, I'll keep posting about them. You can test your iMac here.

Quote of the Week

I'll also be including bitchtastic quotes of the week in these updates. This one, from Laura:
"I want the imac purchasers, who have already paid their money AND spent countless hours being fruitless with their machine set-ups and troubleshooting attempts, to be put on the top of the list for receiving brand new WORKING machines. An added bonus would be for Apple to do this kindly, respectfully, and without any attitude. We should not be out of pocket, taking time off work and energy to lug these heavy ibeasts across town looking for a repair; it's a lemon, Apple — you made it, so please replace it. And please do it kindly, respectfully, and communicate to us the process, so that we can all stay in love with all things Apple. "

The Faulty iMac Saga will run every Wednesday on Gizmodo. That is, until Apple fixes and/or admits the problem.

Kolelinia—a system that allows you to ride your bike above the traffic—looks like a crazy idea until you check out the engineering behind it. Then you will realize that it's not only cool, but it can work too.

Here's how it works.

Kolelinia has two elements, a half-pipe—this is where your bike's wheels run—and a cable above that pipe. The cable is at the same height as your bike's handles, and it provides stability and safety while you fly over the cars. The cable connects to the bike's handle using a special hooking device. This divoce also has a hole for a carabiner, so you can use a harness and safety line for extra safety.

On first sight, it looks like the props for a circus act. But unlike in the circus, Kolelinia doesn't involve any risk thanks to the safety cable system. It may seem convoluted, but it's actually quite simple, and a much better and safer option than having to deal with the dangers of traffic, or flying with stranded extra-terrestrial beings. [Kolelinia via ArchDaily]

In case you haven't heard, Google has delivered a big "screw you" to the Chinese government by refusing to censor their search results. It appears that some citizens are already in mourning—even before the hammer comes down.

[ziboy]

There's a really funny blog named Running From Your Camera. For this week's Shooting Challenge, we're unabashedly stealing their idea.

The challenge: set the self-timer on your camera to 2 seconds, then get as far as you can away from it before the shot using any means you like—judging will be based as much on composition, creativity and general effect as mere distance.

The rules:

1. Submissions need to be your own.
2. Photos need to be taken the week of the contest. (No portfolio linking or it spoils the "challenge" part.)
3. Explain, briefly, the equipment, settings and technique used to snag the shot.
4. Email submissions to contests@gizmodo.com.
5. Include 800px image AND something wallpaper sized in email.

Send your best entries by Sunday at 6PM Eastern to contests@gizmodo.com with "Running" in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs at 800 pixels wide and larger, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Include your shooting summary (camera, lens, ISO, etc) in the body of the email. [Photo]

If you live in a place that is cold and dry right now, do yourself a favor and pick up a humidifier. This particular model from Japan definitely has an elegant "ancient tech" kind of charm.

Carved out of Japanese Cypress, the Mast Humidifier absorbs water from the hull and diffuses it through the air—along with the natural lemony-scent of the wood itself. Its rot resistant and, naturally, electricity free. Plus it's really nice looking. [Masuza via Spoon and Tamago via Mocoloco]

Speculation about the Apple Tablet mostly focuses on what the device is, not how it works. Text input, more than anything else, is the problem Apple needs to solve to make this work. So how will they do it?

CES was rotten with new tablets, some Android, some not, some with fascinating screens, and again, some not. But one thing they all had in common was that they hadn't quite figured out the text input problem: How do you create text without a keyboard?

The Problem

We've been comfortably typing without physical keyboards for years now, and this is largely Apple's doing. One of the great triumphs of the iPhone was to make onscreen keyboards bearable—something that, even if you hate the concept of virtual keys on principle, you have to admit they accomplished. This works:

Extending this to the tablet, though, would be a mistake. I had a chance to play with a few different sizes of tablets at CES, nearly all of which had traditional onscreen keyboards—in particular, the Android 2.0 keyboard, which is aesthetically different but functionally almost identical to iPhone OSes. None of them worked, at least in the way that I wanted them to, for one reason: they were too big. Seven-inch tablets were too large to comfortably thumb-type on, while 10-inch tablets made text input all but impossible. The onscreen keyboard as we know it doesn't scale gracefully, and unless Apple wants their tablet to be completely useless (our sources say they don't) they're going to have to figure this out. So what are Apple's options?

Solution 1: A Giant iPhone

Apple has made mistakes before, but to only have a simple onscreen keyboard would qualify as an outright screw-up. QWERTY-style, thumb-actuated onscreen keyboards work on screens up to about five inches, with the 4.3-inch-screened HTC Touch HD2's keyboard straining even the most unsettlingly long thumbs. But to assume that this won't work is to assume that the tablet is to be held a certain way, with hands at four and eight o-clock, more or less like a touchscreen phone in landscape mode. This may not be the case.
What if the tablet is meant to be held with one hand, and controlled with the other? What if it has some kind of kickstand or mount, so you can actually type with both hands, a la a regular keyboard. What if it's intended to only work in portrait mode, where it would be just about narrow enough to be usable?

Apple's filed extensive patents about how a large, multitouch onscreen keyboard might work, pictured above, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything: Apple's got more patents than the tablet's got rumors, and most of them never materialized into anything meaningful. The keyboard patent, for example, also includes drawings of an onscreen clickwheel, and a description of how small interface elements, like the minimize/close/zoom buttons in OS X proper, could be handled on a touchscreen—all of which are terrible awkward, and dissonant with Apple's touchscreen philosophy so far.

Either way, a single, iPhone-esque keyboard really shouldn't be the primary input method. It could be a supplementary input method, but to have two separate text input mechanisms seems messy, and distinctly un-Apple-y. Lame, half-baked input seems like the kind of thing Steve Jobs might fitfully shitcan a tablet for, actually, but that's getting awfully speculative, even for a piece about a product that doesn't officially exist at all.

Solution 2: Voice Control

Apple's been on covert voice input crusade since it introduced Spoken Interface for OS X which, if you care to look (System Preferences>Speech>Speakable Items "On) is still there. As it stands, it's rudimentary—the iPhone's Voice Control speech recognition is much more accurate—and though there are quite a few customization options, it's really just a command system, not a full text input system.

Even more developed technologies like Dragon Dictation are still niche products, and honestly, the concept of controlling a computer entirely by voice is kind of absurd. "Open Browser! Open Gizmodo! Post withering comment about Apple tablet story, with these words!" No. Not now, and really, not ever—the computer as a stenographer is an obnoxious concept, held back by practical concerns, not technological ones.

That said, Apple is very proud of Voice Control on the iPhone, and they haven't removed voice commands from OS X in over five years. It's likely that there will be some kind of voice input for the tablet, but that it'll be relegated to the same job it's held in the past, taking care of the odd command and initiating the occasional script, and not much else.

Solution 3: The Dreaded Stylus

Styli! The very thing the iPhone was so dedicated to murdering could be the savior of the Apple tablet! Just ask Microsoft.

See, the only other tablet booklet device that's garnering remotely comparable hype is the Courier, Microsoft's dual-screen concept device leaked to us back in September. The Courier concept is very different from the blurry image we've assembled of the Apple tablet—it doesn't have a keyboard. Unlike the Apple tablet, though, we know how the Courier is supposed to work:
Handwriting. Apple staked an entire device line on handwriting recognition—the Newton—over 15 years ago, so isn't it conceivable that they've, you know, figured it out by now? Before taking another detour back to the patent office, let's take a moment to recall Steve Jobs' original iPhone keynote:

Oh, a stylus, right? We're going to use a stylus. No. Who wants a stylus? You have to get ‘em and put ‘em away, and you lose ‘em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let's not use a stylus. We're going to use the best pointing device in the world. We're going to use a pointing device that we're all born with - born with ten of them. We're going to use our fingers. We're going to touch this with our fingers.

This wasn't a dismissal of styli. This was a dickish, public obsoleting of styli. If I were a stylus, I would refuse to work with Steve Jobs, on the basis of him being a jerk.

And yet, in November of 2009, an Apple patent, this time describing stylus input and clearly showing a tablet-like device, went public. If you have the will and patience to parse a little techno-legalese, go for it:

Upon the occurrence of an ink phrase termination event, the ink manager notifies the handwriting recognition engine and organizes the preceding ink strokes into an ink phrase data structure...The present invention, in large part, relates to the observation that client applications and handwriting recognition software in pen-based computer systems can make far more accurate ink-related decisions based on entire ink phrases, rather than individual ink strokes.

If not, you'll have to take my word for it: This is basically the Newton's Rosetta, updated for 2009.

Stylus input would be a stunning break from Apple's iPod/iPhone finger-only strategy, and to a lot of people it would seem regressive. Then again, if the tablet is a perfectly predictable extension of the iPhone concept, it won't revolutionize anything at all. I'm still filing this under "unlikely," but looking at the evidence, I honestly—and surprisingly—can't rule it out.

Solution 4: A New Style of Keyboard

The safest bet for how Apple will handle the text input problem is not coincidentally the broadest. Any onscreen keyboard would have to be different than the iPhone's somehow, but to say that Apple's tablet will have a new style of keyboard is to say that it will have pretty much any kind of onscreen keyboard that is unlike the iPhone's. This is not very useful! Luckily, we have guidance, from other companies, and even from Apple.

Split onscreen keyboards are neither new nor common, which makes them kind of perfect: the map has been charted, so Apple needs only to explore it.

The most public of the alternatives is an actual, available product called DialKeys. Coopted by Microsoft a few years ago, this tech, which splits the keyboard into two crescent-shaped virtual keyboards, shipped with a handful of touchscreen UMPCs, a category of devices that died off before it had the time to truly solve the onscreen keyboard problem. It wasn't very good. But the concept had potential, maybe. Apple is definitely aware of DialKeys, even if they can't use it—not that we'd want them to, or that they need to, having acquired a company with a similar concept about five years ago.

FingerWorks, a company specializing in touch interfaces and gesture concepts, was forcefully drawn into the Apple family about five years ago. A lot of their touch gestures actually made their way to the iPhone, albeit adapted from touchpad to screen use, according to FingerWorks employees:

The one difference that's actually quite significant is the iPhone is a display with the multi-touch, and the FingerWorks was just an opaque surface. That's all I'm going to say there. There's definite similarities, but Apple's definitely taken it another step by having it on a display

Interestingly, FingerWorks had a physical product with a split keyboard, which sat over Apple laptops' regular keyboards, and which promptly disappeared after their acquisition. From the press release, which, mind you, hit the wires in 2003:

The MacNTouch Gesture Keyboard is a complete user interface that serves as mouse, standard keyboard, and powerful multi-finger gesture interpreter. Mouse operations like point, click, drag, scroll, and zoom are combined seamlessly with touch-typing and multi-finger gesture everywhere on the MacNTouch's surface. Proprietary hardware and software allows pointing right over the keys, thus eliminating the frequent movement of the hand between the keyboard and the touchpad. The MacNTouch has been designed to minimize stress and it gives users unprecedented control of their computer using hand gestures.

Obviously such a product relates to a lot of aspects of tablet input, so let's zero in on text: it's exactly what the tablet needs, basically, except it's not software. They keyboard is split for possible thumb use, it's capable of gestures, and most importantly, it's already owned by Apple.

Best of all, the FingerWorks domain, which proudly displays all of these concepts, was pulled from the internet this week. If this feels like a strange coincidence, that's because, well, it is.

Making Bets

For all the evidence about the tablet's possible input methods, there's no standout answer. Apple's got a thing for voice input, a history with onscreen keyboards, a patent trail and strong lineage of stylus input, and a pattern of suspicious behavior with and towards new keyboard types. We've got a handful of cases here, all compelling, and all conflicting. And the takeaway, if you haven't picked it up yet, is that nobody really knows.

For my money, though, an adapted, possibly split onscreen keyboard is the best bet, and assuming the learning curve isn't too steep, the most appealing option. But of the options laid out here, it's by far the most vague—its FingerWorks ancestor is nearly a decade old, conceived in a time before multitouch screens—so the only truly safe bet is that whatever Apple comes up with, it's going to surprise us.

Conan O'Brien just released a statement saying he will not host The Tonight Show if it's pushed away from the local news. He also says the show's historic timeslot is essential to its integrity, despite DVRs and streaming video.

The story to date: The Tonight Show has aired for an incredible 55 years on NBC. It's one of a child's handful of truly legendary American shows, one that both kids and their parents grew up watching every night. Historically, it airs at 11:35, just following the late local news, and ever since Johnny Carson took over from Jack Paar in 1962, the show has been a ratings juggernaut, through Carson's 30 years and Jay Leno's 17. In 2004, NBC announced that Conan O'Brien, then hosting Late Night (following The Tonight Show), would be taking over the show five years hence. And then everything went to hell.

After 17 years of hosting The Tonight Show, Leno wasn't just about to retire with his airplane hangar of cars and his reputation as the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese of comedy: NBC gave him a daily hour-long show at 10PM. Shoehorning Leno in at 10PM, every day, was a ballsy move—and it bombed. At the same time, while critically acclaimed (check out comedian Patton Oswalt's description of Conan's Tonight Show here), the new Tonight Show was failing to achieve the ratings it had under Leno (2.8 million to Leno's 5 million). Despite past evidence that Conan just needs a little time to grow, NBC decided last week to shake up their new late-night schedule. The network proposed cutting The Jay Leno Show to a half-hour, moving it just after the local news to the 11:35 slot historically claimed by The Tonight Show, and shoving Conan's fledgling Tonight Show back a half-hour, to 12:05. Conan fans, both in the media and in the public, reacted angrily—how dare NBC push the venerable Tonight Show after midnight, just to make room for a show nobody likes? Conan himself responded on his show—check out the clips from his monologue (and from Letterman and Craig Ferguson) over here.

Today, Conan released a statement saying he will not host The Tonight Show if it's pushed back to 12:05. It's a painful read; Conan is obviously in pain that he may have to give up his fantasy-island, dream-of-all-dreams job, but he's been fucked over through no fault of his own and NBC's left him with little choice. Our interest (as techies) is the line in his statement (copied in full, below) that despite all the new video-on-demand advances, from Hulu to BitTorrent, The Tonight Show isn't The Tonight Show if it's moved away from its 11:35 slot. I'm not so sure about that—but how do you guys feel?

Does a TV Show's Timeslot Matter in the Age of DVRs and Internet?(trends)

Either way, we hope NBC honors its commitment to O'Brien and lets him take the reins of The Tonight Show and guide it to a new chapter, the way he was supposed to. If you feel the same way, you can use the contact info Consumerist posted to bug the hell out of NBC.

Scheduling is an important question, and one I know us tech geeks think about as we torrent, stream and rip. But, now that I think about it, there's an even more important question to be asked:

Isn't Conan Great?(surveys)

[NYTimes]

Here's that statement, in full:

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ — Conan O'Brien released the following statement.

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I've been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I've been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I've been absurdly lucky. That said, I've been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn't matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it's always been that way.

SOURCE Conan O'Brien