Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And if there is a downside to being a tech geek, besides the whole not-being-able-to-get-a-date thing, it’s that this is an almost impossibly high standard for most technology to reach. Nothing is magical to us, because we know how it works.

Except for I-Tech’s Virtual Laser Keyboard (VLK).

The VLK is exactly what it says it is: A little black box that projects a red laser beam onto any flat surface in the shape of a standard QWERTY keyboard. You connect the box, either wirelessly via Bluetooth or via USB on the serial version, to a device like a cell phone or computer, and then type. Yes, that’s right. You type on the laser-light projection of a keyboard, and the letters you strike appear on the screen.

Even after reading the technical explanation on the I-Tech website, I’m still not entirely sure how it does this. I mean, I understand it in principal, but just as no matter how much I read on the principal of aerodynamics I still can’t really understand what keeps 10 tons of metal airborne, I can’t really understand how hitting the projection of the letter “J” causes a “J” to appear on my screen.

And that’s okay. It’s nice that once in a while a piece of technology is magic, even to me.

I-Tech still has some work to do getting the VLK working with all the devices around you might want to use it with – right now their site only offers drivers for Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and little else. It does work out-of-the-box with Macs and most PCs, although besides being a very cool technology demo there doesn’t seem to be much use for a virtual keyboard when a real one is available. The VLK also performs best in lower light where the laser projection is clearly visible. Also, in our tests we found the VLK started behaving erratically if projected on surface with a lot of light and dark spots, like some Formica counter tops.

Geek-o-Meter: The $179 I-Tech Virtual Laser Keyboard is one of the coolest gadgets we’ve seen in quite a while: a real working keyboard made entirely of laser light. The magical nature of this device is dimmed only somewhat by a limited number of supported platforms and an inability to function in bright light. It gets a 7 on the Geek-o-Meter.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 7:34 pm and is filed under HOME, TECH, KGO RADIO, CELL PHONES, INPUT DEVICES, FATHER'S DAY 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.