With the recent launch of its Xynergi digital production center, Fairlight has altered the way that media professionals interact with content, while also offering the global computing industry a new transformational keyboard technology. The new keyboard technology can change contextually on-the-fly and allows implementation of cascading submenu trees, animated status indicators and enables icon-driven menus on its keys.
The Fairlight keyboard is currently shipping as a component of the Fairlight Xynergi media production center, which includes a hardware acceleration engine and pro audio mixing and editing software.
According to Fairlight CEO, John Lancken, the new key switch technology advances interaction between people and media by guiding the next step in menu-driven applications. This is achieved by transforming keys, either using icons or any of 600 available Microsoft fonts. “The keyboard switching technology eliminates an entire series of synapses that would otherwise be required to navigate from inspiration to execution,” Lancken said. “Beyond digital audio and video, there are tremendous applications for these switches in industrial computing, distance learning, technology training, traditional teaching, trading desk, network operation, quick service restaurants, retail and wherever people and information co-exist.”
The controller can support any type of language or icon-driven menu structure with an on-demand QWERTY keyboard for routine naming tasks and immediate access to MS Office tools and programs. The controller also features eight touch-sensitive rotary controllers and multiple soft keys arranged around a color control zone known as the “pad.”
The design allows full-color video displays to be accommodated within a mechanical key switch with the same size and similar mechanical feel to those found in computer keyboards. As a result, Fairlight’s new technology is regarded as having the potential to spawn a whole new generation of computer input devices. These QWERTY-style keyboards composed of picture keys could be used to simplify their user interfaces by showing layouts of CTRL and SHIFT commands.
For more information, visit www.fairlightau.com.
