Ignoring things like the wrist watch, the earliest wearable computer was built back in 1961 by Ed Thorp (father of the theory of card-counting in Blackjack) and Claude Shannon (father of information theory) to answer a question that had plagued mankind for generations: is there any way I can cheat reliably at roulette?

Now over 43 years later, history repeats itself yet again as a treo has walked away with more than $2.3 million, allegedly having used a cellphone rigged with a laser range-finder to up their odds of winning from 1 in 37 to about 1 in 6. Police have dropped the investigation after deciding there was no interference with the ball in play. (That wouldn’t fly in Vegas, where laws were put in place after wearables users in the ’70s spooked casinos.)

(Thanks to Steve Schwartz for the link!)

Man, I can think of all sorts of mischief I could get in with one of these things…

From Personal Tech Pipeline (and thanks to Thad for the link):

Your favorite rodent has learned that Siemens is working on an all-purpose gadget that simply pays attention to what’s happening nearby, and notifies you by SMS when something is strange.

Called the MyAy, the experimental device has a keypad but no display. It monitors its environment with a microphone, an infrared sensor, a temperature sensor, and an acceleration sensor (to tell if the MyAy itself is being moved).

Yesterday I did a quick scan of the one-handed keyboards that are available, and figured I’d post a quick summary:

Twiddler

• Type: 16-button chording, straps to hand
• Price: $219
• Interfaces: USB, PS/2
• Words Per Minute (avg): 10 after an hour practice, 30 after 10 hours, top speed in high 60s
• Studies: Three by Kent Lyons at Georgia Tech (novices, experts and learning aids)
• Notes: I like the Twiddler, though I’ve not a lot of experience with other one-handed keyboards. Biggest win for the Twiddler is I can touch-type on it (unlike any of the predictive-text systems like T-9 on a cellphone keypad), it has a good top speed and it attaches to my hand so it’s especially convenient for mobile typing. The Twiddler-2 improved on the older model by replacing the nigh-unusable mouse with a Trackpoint and acting like a real keyboard instead of requiring a serial interface, but unfortunately they removed one of the thumb keys, it requires Win98 to remap keys in batch and you can’t remap all the thumb keys anymore. Personally I like my Twiddler-1 better — I miss being able to do things map “NUM + ALT + any key” to be an arrow key in the appropriate direction.

Half-QWERTY

• Type: literally half a QWERTY keyboard where you hold down a modifier key to type the “mirror-side” keys
• $295
• Interfaces: USB, PS/2
• Words Per Minute (avg): between 24-43 wpm after 10 hours practice, top speed around 60 wpm
• Studies: Three by Edgar Matias (Transfer from QWERTY, CHI’94, CHI’96)
• Notes: Never used it myself, though it looks like you can get good speed out of it and it’s quick to learn if you already know QWERTY. Edgar also sells a wearable version that straps to your arm, though unlike the Twiddler that means your other arm is also tied up when you type.

FrogPad

• Type: Similar to Half-QWERTY, but with common letters mapped to the home-row.
• Price: $100 to $196 depending on type
• Interfaces: USB or Bluetooth
• Words Per Minute (avg): Sales lit claims 40 wpm after 10 hours practice
• Studies: Their webpage says studies were conducted at Rice University, but I haven’t found the links yet.

CyKey

• Type: 9-button Chording based on the Microwriter Agenda’s chord system
• Price: £57 – £90 depending on interface
• Interfaces: Palm IR (IrDA half-duplex) or USB
• Words Per Minute: Sales lit claims 25-50 wpm
• Notes: MegaSharp has a “wearability kit” that attaches your PDA and CyKey to your belt, but based on the picture I wouldn’t want to use it unless I was standing still. I also see that Computer Shopper in the UK dinged the CyKey, not for the typing method so much as the fact that the IR is incompatible with a lot of Palm devices. Caveat emptor.

Others

And of course there’s the plethora of cellphone / PDA keyboards like the one-thumbed “chicklet keyboards” on the Treo-600/650 and Blackberry or using Multitap or T-9 on a standard 12-button cellphone keyboard. I’m not a big fan of Multitap or predictive systems like T-9, but I’ve liked the Treo keyboard even for one-handed typing. I expect I’d have more trouble using it eyes-free than I do with the Twiddler, but then again I don’t have years of experience using the Treo to type SMSs under the table when the teacher isn’t looking either…

A couple non-commercial things of interest:

The Data Egg was an integrated PDA & five-button chording keyboard designed and prototyped back in the early ’90s, but it got black-holed after the inventor lost control of his IP. Never tried one myself, but I’ve always liked the idea as a sort of chording-keyboard sleeve over a PDA.

Something else I like the look of is Chordite, which interests me mostly because of its unique hand-fit. Prototype only, researcher claims about 33 wpm.