Expect to see big innovations in this area with the commercial release of the Oculus Rift.

There are two big things the Oculus does:

Adds depth

Creates an enormous large (virtual) work space

Think about instead of sitting hunched over a small laptop in a tiny room, the entire Grand Canyon is your office. You don't need to use the whole thing, but the space is available just in case. You won't have to hunch over, you can move around, may be even run.

This user "okreylos" on YouTube has some really interesting videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/okreylos?feature=watch By combining the Oculus & Hydra with the Kinect, he has a tool to move around an interact with 3D data

There is someone else, who I can't remember, who used the Kinect to overlay images of his own hands in the 3D environment. Curiously, with all of this focus on augmented reality the solution may just be to pull the reality around us in to the digital world.

Would be cool to have the grand canyon, and an efficient eyes free keyboard, a one handed eyes free keyboard with buttons on which you could type at least 80 wpm.

Something like the leapmotion? https://www.leapmotion.com/

From the reviews that I've read, it isn't quite ready. Has anyone integrated one into their development process?

The Leapmotion is designed for analog input. Typical software development is nearly all digital input: hitting keys and such, which is something that you have to sacrifice in a system like the Leapmotion or a multitouch surface. I could see it being a lot more useful for games or graphic design.

There's been a few people playing with them reported on hackaday[1]. I'd agree with that assessment that it's not quite ready but they are definitely getting close.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahackaday.com+leapmoti...

Thanks for the link!

The gorilla arm http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html will hit you hard if you try to use a near-vertical touchscreen, or hold your hands up and out to make gestures, for long periods. A better solution would be a touchscreen pitched at an angle like that of an eazel or a pitched writing-desk: as those historical precedents suggest, that seems to be a good compromise offering easy manipulation without as much of the hunching over that a flat desk inflicts on you. Or if you just want larger ratio of physical to on-screen movements you could just lower the sensitivity of your mouse.

The goal in "minimizing fingers movements" when typing is not about being lazy or not wanting to exercise.

The goal is to be a) more efficient and b) minimize the risk of developing RSI.

Nothing prevents you from still doing real exercise even if you have a keyboard made to minimize fingers movements: the two aren't incompatible.

You didn't understand me. It's not about being lazy or not getting enough exercise. It's about being more connected to your work. Maybe it's not the case for you, or even most people, but I am much more connected to what I'm doing if there is a physical component to it (writing down a lecture, even if I'm never going to read it, reading a book on paper that I'm touching, etc.)

> The goal is to be a) more efficient and b) minimize the risk of developing RSI.

Also 3 keeping one hand free, Douglas Englebart used a chording keyset during the mother of all demo, when using the mouse

And Steve Jobs decided not to include it in the first Apple machine :(