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This butterfly keyboard can replace your mouse, sort of
Have you ever thought about how you might improve the standard QWERTY keyboard? Jesse Vincent has. He's a keyboard enthusiast, a rare breed of geek inexplicably obsessed with text entry devices. We found him showing of Keyboardio at TechCrunch Disrupt -- a butterfly-shaped keyboard designed to put more emphasis on the opposable thumb. In addition to general ergonomic tweaks, Vincent's design puts keys like ctrl, delete, shift and alt under the user's left and right thumbs, taking the load of peripheral toggling off of the pinky finger. There's also a new "function" button under the typist's palms, which can apply macros and modifiers to almost any key.
Equil's Smartpen 2 can transcribe your notes without your tablet's help
The Equil JOT smartpen was a nice evolution on digitally-enhanced writing implements. Much like Livescribe's digitizing pen, it copied all a writer's scribbles to a companion iPad app -- but the JOT didn't need a special notebook to do it. Rather than requiring writers to buy special smartpen-friendly paper, Equil created a sensor that could be attached to any notebook and synced wirelessly with iOS devices. Now that JOT's rebranded successor, the Smartpen 2, doesn't even need to do that.
Twitch's CEO sees Amazon integration as an opportunity, not an obligation
When Amazon purchased Twitch for almost $1 billion, the question burbled to the top of everyone's mind: Which Amazon service will invade the platform first? The idea hangs with minor dread, a concern that a corporate agenda will ruin what customers have come to love about the game-streaming service. Twitch CEO Emmett Shear isn't worried, however. He's been adamant Twitch sold to Amazon because it promised autonomy. "Our attitude toward it is not that this transaction happened, therefore we have to do integrations," he explained at TechCrunch Disrupt. "It's that now we have the opportunity." Amazon, he explains, offers Twitch new resources for security, licensing and marketing -- but says that Twitch will only integrate Amazon services that benefit the consumer.
