Just a few ideas that struck me.

James "Xakh" Lynch superstuff7 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 9 15:59:49 EDT 2010


Hey all! I had a little moment hit me earlier, and I realized something that
can be done for the nanonote. I apologize in advance for the walls of text.

Currently, it's hard to see the keyboard in the dark, since the screen is so
far above it, and doesn't give enough light to the bottom of the clamshell.
So, when typng at night, it's somewhat trial and error, especially coupled
with the nanonote's small space bar, making some things sort of hard (I
can't be the only one that likes to get a few late night frags in on
freedoom, and I know I'm not the only one absolutely addicted to that
roguelike powder.) So most modern devices deal with this in one of two ways.

1. They increase brightness and size on their monitors to the point that
their backlight can be used to read by, killing accuracy on dim colors, not
to mention my retinas when I open the damned thing. This is cheap, but
drains battery the same way dracula'd drain a bloodbank.
2. They light their keyboards. This takes some battery, but not much, and
looks fantastic.

Now lighting a keyboard is expensive, usually. But I noticed something. The
nanonote's keyboard is made of clear plastic on the top. This doesn't seem
like much, but I had an idea. All we need to light the nanonote keyboard is
two or three strategically placed LEDs inside the enclosure. One on each
side and perhaps one at the bottom. It would make all the plastic keycaps
appear to glow, lighting the letters. It could be user activated, I'm not
sure how right now, but I think it could work. Currently, the solution I
have is to tape a small flashlight to the bottom of my nn for visibility. It
works, but is definitely not feasible for long term usage.

There was one other idea that struck me a few days ago. To make a pointing
device for the nn, we don't need to add some expensive joystick or anything.
If we could move the volume rocker to the side of the unit, we could use
those two spaces as the left and right mouse buttons, and just use the
cursor keys in the same manner as the d-pad on phones. Alternatively, we
could change the footprint, putting the arrows in the traditional "tophat"
shape, and placing the left and right mouse buttons on either side.

Anyway, thanks for listening, I don't know if either of these are fully
feasible, but I guess I could take a look when I get those 3d scans to look
at the guts of this machine.

Until then, thanks for listening!
Sincerely,
James "xakh" Lynch, the Rebel Without a Clue
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