ZSA Loves, and Live Training that lights up your board

Hi |FNAME|,

March! I can almost feel spring here in Ontario. Honestly, I can't wait.

This month we introduced a new Oryx feature that lights up your keyboard in Live Training! Details below.

We also have a new series of posts that has nothing to do with keyboards, all about things we love. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about the concept — check out ZSA Loves below and email me any feedback. Do you think reviews like these can be useful? Let me know at ez@zsa.io.

In other news, Robin authored a deep dive into international layouts. It unravels many of the mysteries and confusions involved in trying to set up a board to type in French, German, or any other locale for that matter.

Finally, you should really check out Lee's excellent interview below.

All the best,
Erez

Whack-a-Key Lights Up Your Board

A useful tech preview

Whack-a-Key is a training mode for becoming expert at macros and function keys. It has you hit individual keys, not as part of a word or phrase. And now, when you hit the wrong key, the right key on your board lights up!

Introducing ZSA Loves

Reviews with no links

Doesn't the Internet have enough reviews already? It would seem that way until you dig in. ZSA Loves is a new series of reviews that have no affiliate links (no links at all, for that matter). We're doing this because we love the products, and we want to share that love with you.

Setting Up International Layouts

If only we spoke keycodes

If you type in one or more non-English layouts, you probably know this requires some setup. Robin wrote a blog post for the ages, documenting the ins and outs of international keyboard layouts and the various ways to set things up for maximum comfort and minimum confusion.

Featured User Interview

Lee Schneider

Novelist and Podcast Producer

Lee’s career has taken him from the clacking typewriters of the newsroom to an all-Apple setup to create and produce his projects. Check out his software for intense focus!

"It’s important to me to use the non-digital processing part of the mind, so I write in Leuchtturm1917 notebooks, usually with pencils like the Mitsubishi 9800 F."

Layer of the month

Layer of the month: Moonlander RGB Color Palette Picker

This layer acts as a RGB color palette picker for the static RGB color of the keyboard. Switch to this layer, pick your color, switch back. The color values are perfectly divided by the number of used keys.

Things we liked

Calligrapher.ai →

Realistic computer-generated handwriting

Not just a hand-writing font; this clean and minimal online tool allows you to generate a line of text in a variety of handwritten styles, and tweak several attributes within each style. Great for display headlines, and just fun to play with.

Sunshine →

Open-source game streaming host

Powerful gaming PCs are great until you want to lounge on the couch. Paired with the Moonlight client available on a huge variety of devices, Sunshine lets you leverage your desktop hardware to play games anywhere you’d like. With proper setup, you can get a very low latency experience that’s almost indistinguishable from playing natively on a powerful laptop or console.

Passport Index →

Passport passport on the wall

What’s the most powerful passport in the world, granting visa-free access to the most countries? I can almost guarantee it’s not what you think (I was surprised). This nerdy gem is worth it not just for the rankings, but also for the beautiful photos of all the passports. My personal fave is Portugal’s passport I think.

Skybox AI →

Panoramas from prompts

A fun generative AI tool that spits out a panorama based on your prompt. It’s like a VR image, in that you can pan around and take in the view. I wish you could walk around, too (that can’t be too far away).

Literature Clock →

“It was seven minutes to ten.”

A web-based open-source clock that shows literary quotes in which the current time happens to be mentioned. Quite fun as a low-key screensaver. There’s a dark mode, too.