keyboard

Air Keyboard is a very useful app that can expand the functionality and control you have over your desktop or laptop computer with a few quick taps. It's not a perfect app, though. Setup can be a major headache and the performance can lag depending on the connection you have between phone and device; but when it is finally working properly, it's very handy.

After setting up Air Keyboard on both your phone and a desktop PC or Mac, you can turn both apps on and allow them to connect. This process can be finicky at times. There … Read more

They work them hard in German banks.

They make the eat, breathe, and sleep their jobs. Especially that last one.

At least that's the impression that must be gleaned from the tale of a German bank employee who fell asleep on his computer keyboard.

Oh, we've all done it. We've all woken up hours later to read that we just wrote: "CHHCHCHCHCHCCHCHCHCHCCCO."

And yet this bank employee seems to have fallen asleep during a transfer of funds.

As Agence France-Presse tells it, a court in Hessen heard that he was supposed to send 62.40 … Read more

Back in the days before Mac OS X Lion (not to mention Mountain Lion), I used a handy trackpad gesture when I found myself mired in a particularly lengthy web page that would let me jump back to the top. I just swiped upward on the trackpad with three fingers and I was right back at the top of the page.

When OS X Lion hit, one of the many features it introduced was Mission Control, which you accessed by swiping up with three fingers (or all four, if you tweaked a setting in System Preferences). Mission Control is great … Read more

After learning a few keyboard shortcuts, my embrace of Mission Control has tightened. Because my 13.3-inch MacBook Pro has only so much screen real estate, I spread out the applications I use most frequently across a handful of virtual desktops in Mission Control in an effort to avoid feeling cramped when multitasking. I have come to rely on it and its virtual workspaces throughout the workday, and I get in and out of it more quickly now than when I relied solely on my MacBook's trackpad to navigate my way around it.

Without further ado, I present a … Read more

It may not be a Swype or a SwiftKey killer yet, but the Google Keyboard is now available as a downloadable app.

A post Wednesday on Google+ touted the Google Play Store debut of the app, which offers "Gesture Typing" so that you can drag your finger from one letter to the next to spell words.

Google Keyboard offers some interesting competition for other swipe-to-write keyboards. Most notably, it's free where most of its competitors are not. It also has next-word suggestions, auto-complete, voice recognition, and support for 26 languages, although the keyboard itself is English-only for … Read more

Perfect Keyboard Free Edition, a free macro builder and editor from Macro Toolworks, creates and plays macros in all Windows applications when triggered by keyboard hotkeys, mouse buttons, or autocomplete commands. It's based on the developer's automated macro software, although with fewer features than their shareware offerings. But Perfect Keyboard Free Edition is an excellent choice for frequent typists and anyone who would like a fast, easy-to-use alternative to entering the same data and clicking the same buttons over and over again.

We highly recommend allowing Perfect Keyboard Free Edition's installer to finish by opening the program'… Read more

We review a lot of wireless Bluetooth keyboards and keyboard cases for iPads and other tablets, but we've yet to review a wired keyboard for the iPad. It comes as little surprise then that Logitech, which makes plenty of Bluetooth keyboards, has unveiled the Wired Keyboard for iPad, which it dubs "the first iPad keyboard made specially for the classroom environment."

The keyboard will come in a Lightning connector or 30-pin connector versions and have an MSRP of $59.99. The Lightning version is due to ship in August; the 30-pin version will ship in October. … Read more

Quick housekeeping note: There was a technical glitch yesterday that prevented the Cheapskate newsletter from being sent. Apologies for that, but remember, you can always check the site directly.

As for today, I'm running way behind due to my travel schedule; everything should be back to normal come Thursday.

Anyway. I know a number of you have endured extremely slow shipping from 1SaleADay, so today's deal comes with this big fat caveat: Expect a 2-to-3-week wait for it to arrive. Don't expect a tracking number, nor any response from the company to shipping-related inquiries.

That said, if … Read more