Abstract: A three degrees of freedom interactive display controller device is disclosed, comprising a hand manipulable housing unit having an opening for the passage of a mouse ball, two motion detectors for detecting the movement of the mouse ball and converting that motion to output signals controlling the translational movement of an object on the display of a computer and a finger operated conveyor belt or roller for controlling the translational motion of the object with respect to a third translational axis. All translation controls are operable to be physically moved in a direction which corresponds to the desired simulated direction of movement of the object on the display. The physical motion of each control is unbounded and the actual physical position of the housing unit is independent of the simulated position of the object on the display.

Abstract: A keyboard having the ability to predictively display different characters in association with its various keys within a variety of predefined character set layouts, based upon either the character preceeding an insertion point in a corresponding text field on a display or the last character entered from the keyboard is disclosed. Although each key of the keyboard is capable of displaying numerous different characters, each key represents only one character at a time and each character is displayed at only one key location. The user can also manually change character set layouts. When a user selects a particular key or selects an insertion point within the text field, all keys are updated to display a character set layout that corresponds to the set of characters from which the user would be most likely to want to select a character from next, based upon the frequency of that particular character combination being used in either a particular language or application.