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SourceForge CEO Gets Enthusiastic Typing On Das Keyboard

Scott Kauffman, CEO of SourceForge Inc. (the company behind Slashdot, SF, ThinkGeek and Freshmeat with the Nasdaq ticker LNUX) stopped by Metadot / Das Keyboard during his trip to Texas last week.

We spent some time playing with the Das Keyboard and enumerated all the advantages of having an old-style IBM Model M tactile keyboard with mechanical key switches. I was happy to see Scott smile while his fingers were flying over the keyboard, making an addictive clicky sound, as he said. Scott types fast. Really fast.

Scott Kauffman typing on Das Keyboard

(Picture: Scott Kauffman typing on Das Keyboard)

After lunch, while walking to his car in the scorching summer Texas sun (it was over 100F), he commented, “I don’t know how you guys get used to this heat.” Well, here is how it works: when I first came from Paris to Austin 11 years ago I had a very hard time with the heat. People told me, “you’ll see, after a while you’ll get used to it.” Eleven years later I’m not used to it, and I don’t know anybody who really is. That’s how it works!

Keyboard for blondes: ambiance included

pinkkbdThis keyboard has been approved by the American Blondes Association of America. Nothing less Madame.

In some cases, tactile feedback and productivity is not important, the user experience comes from color, key labels and flower pots. This is called ambiance. If you are blonde you want this keyboard.

How not to make money on the web…

An interesting article from Chad L Perrin that talks about Web 2.0 business models and takes Montastic, our free website monitoring service as an example.

http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=129

GWT: The end of HTML for web applications

For those who have missed the start of this quiet revolution, Google is changing the way web applications are developed.
After rolling out Google maps, Gmail and Google spreadsheet (among many other tools), Google has released its secret sauce: the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). It is a Java development framework that makes writing Rich Internet Applications (understand Ajax applications) a breeze. Best of all it is open source.

It was the missing link. Now we can create web applications that are as powerful as the desktop ones.

We decided to invest some time to explore the advantages and challenges of this framework. The results of our experiment will be posted soon. Let the fun begin.