I know, there’s a half-dozen or so products and/or websites out there that allow you to store your media online.  But I am always looking for new toys, and I found a widget!  I love widgets!

Ricoh has launched quanp.com (pronounced kwan-puh), which gives you three ways to send your files off to be saved in the ether.  You can use their desktop application (Windows only), their web interface, or a widget on your desktop.  It provides drag and drop functionality, and accounts are currently free.  Quanp is being offered in beta in the U.S. at the current time, although it’s been available in Japan as a free service with a paid upgraded version for the last three months.  No word on if the U.S. version will offer an upgraded version for pay, but I”m sure that will be coming.

The Windows interface is really rather nifty (sorry, Mac guys, there’s no Mac version) with an snappy GUI and visuals that make sense to my very visually-oriented brain.  The web interface was nothing special.  The widget, which looks sort of like a little drain, is functional as well as being amusing to watch when you drag a file over and drop it.  Did I mention I love widgets?

Once you’ve set it up, you can also add sharing functionality so others may access the information.  This is handy for those that like to share, although when it comes to pictures, I’m mostly doing that through Flickr.  But I can easily share MP3’s (uh-oh, that might get me in trouble!) and word processing files.  I actually do share word processing files a good bit anyway with my writing critique groups, and if the interface can be fun, that makes it all that much better.

Lenovo has taken a huge, and risky, step, by making radical changes to the keyboard layouts on its latest line of business-end laptops, the ThinkPad T400.  They spent a year researching what keys people use, and how, to try and come up with a layout that will make the most-used keys accessible and easier to use.

The keys they moved and resized?  The Escape and Delete keys.

It turns out that people hit the delete and escape keys as many as 700 times a week.  Thier current position and size oftem makes hitting those keys dicey, and often messes with your insert and/or home/end keys as well, repositioning your cursor just when you are getting your typing groove on.

Over the years, different keyboard designs have emerged, but few other than the well-known QWERTY ever remain on the market long.  I use a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard on my desktop machine, and find it to be very comfortable, but most people I talk to think the ergo keyboard is absurd and useless.  I have had a success of laptops over the years, but the layouts of most of them were identical to each other, with the exception of my first Dell, which put the delete key second button over from the right.  My current Dell has the key on the upper firht.  It is wider than the function keys next to it, but not as tall as the Home key below it.  I’ve also had the opportunity to play with a Netbook, and easily dismissed its keyboard as being completely useless.  The keyboard is too small, but also, several important keys have  been rearranged, most notably, the quote/double quote key.  As a fiction writer, this one element alone was enough to make me throw the little unit out the window.

In the new Lenovo keyboard layout, the delet and escape key are twice as high as the keys around it, but just as wide.  The delete key, particularly, is placed in such a way as to make it much less likely that you’ll hit Insert, Home/End as you might on other keyboards.  Will the new layout be appreciated or scorned?  Only time will tell, but I think having some studies to back it up makes a big difference in overall acceptance.  If the change improves typing, then I’m all for it, as long as I don’t have to learn anything new.