Seems like every gadget is being miniaturized these days. Enter the Optimus mini: a flexible, functional keyboard with just three keys, each complete with an OLED screen with a 96- by 96-pixel resolution and showing 5 frames per second. 

The keyboard is placed either horizontally or vertically alongside your regular keyboard and plugs into your computer via USB 1.0. Shown at the left, the Optimus Mini is set to retrieve e-mail, show the time, and display Web images.

Every key can be configured to show an image, and as the images change, you can use the Shift or Ctrl keys on your regular keyboard to execute the actions. For now, it only works on the Windows platform, but Optimus is currently developing applications to work on Mac OS and Linux.
 

The Optimus Mini keyboard is still in production, but will be ready to ship on May 15. You can preorder it now for a limited time offer of $100.

Sebastian Rupley of PC Magazine reports that full-size keyboards will arrive later this year.