Computer Interface/ keyboard and touch pad at the sametime

Following is the video of 2009's (or 2008?) mobile phone in Japan.

sorry, the advertisement is in Japanese, but you can see the function which enable the keyboard to be used as a touch screen...
Hmm... i dont know how to say it appropriately though...

see the video below






This came to market right after the iPhone came i think...
while many companies tried to make touch screen, this company went to different way.


maybe one of the needs behind is that, many japanese were suspicious about whether we can keep the screen clean or not

I think it is really interesting idea for computers....

I mean, what if we only have a keyboard instead of "mouse and keyboard" or "touch pad and keyboard"?


and we can control our cursor with moving our finger on the surface of the keyboard as we do with the touch pad in laptop.
and we can click with tapping the surface also, and we can type if we press the button solidly.... or just pressing one button which changes into cursor -> typing, typing -> cursor since we don't really use it at the really same time...

hmmm.... maybe it will cause some problems, but as thinkpad do, it would be good if we can have some controllers near keyboards, so that we could type and move cursor at the same time :)

I'm using mac book though... i can understand the feeling who loves think pad :)