Microsoft's Adaptive Keyboard prototype

The engineers at Microsoft have showcased a new impression of keyboard for the desktop computers. The Adaptive Keyboard incorporates a touch screen LCD above the top row of keys, which displays information such as shortcut icons or document previews.

The key characters can, however, change to show separate functions based on the software that is being used.

Hakon Strande, Program Manager, Microsoft said, "We created a concept prototype in the Adaptive Keyboard that suggests that the display capabilities of high efficiency input devices such as keyboards and mice should be as dynamic and relevant to user context as the UI on the PC screen."

The team of engineers at Microsoft looks to improvise the learning curve of software by enhancing many of the basic functions. With this concept keyboard, users can swiftly access complex functions based on visual recognition, rather than recalling a memorized shortcut layout.

The Adaptive Keyboard concept is included in the Student Innovation Contest at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. Strande clarified that any of the function examples have yet to be officially planned for future software updates.

Keyboard with the new Indian Rupee Symbol

With the announcement of TVS Gold Bharat, a new keyboard with a dedicated Indian Rupee symbol key, TVS-E becomes the first and only Indian IT company to incorporate the new Indian Rupee symbol in its keyboard. The company dedicated this development to the nation on its 64th Independence Day.


Announcing the launch of TVS Gold Bharat Keyboard, Mr. S. S. Raman, Managing Director, TVS Electronics said, "We are proud to depict the Indian Rupee symbol in our keyboard and we are the first and only Indian manufacturer to do so. As the core Indian company,

Internext Explorer 9

Microsoft  will unveil the Internet Explorer 9 beta next month at an event in San Francisco titled "Beauty of the Web." Microsoft has built IE9 with the expectation that HTML5 will blur the line between Websites and native applications, and the company has built numerous enhancements in the forthcoming release.
"Developers are already working hard on some amazing new web experiences enabled by Internet Explorer 9," said James Pratt, product manager on the IE9 team, in a Thursday blog post.
Microsoft has been trumpeting IE9's speedy, hardware-accelerated HTML 5 rendering for the past several months, often by pitting IE9 against Firefox and Google's Chrome browser in handling graphically intensive Websites. However, critics have pointed out the selective nature of Microsoft's testing and noted that all of its competitors are also working on hardware fueled HTML5 rendering.
So far Microsoft has dished up over 2.5 million downloads of the four IE9 platform previews, the most recent of which was released in early August.