Bring back the TrackPoint

The TrackPoint that I'm referring to is that red pointing stick that used to be commonly found on IBM (now Lenovo) laptops.

TrackPoint on a Lenovo Thinkpad

The advantages of the TrackPoint over the touch pad are very apparent after using the TrackPoint for a small period of time. First of all the TrackPoint is located in the middle of the keyboard, surrounded by the B, G, and H keys. This allows the user to type much faster and use the computer more efficiently as the user's keys never have to leave the home row. Another advantage of this design is that it affords a smaller and sleeker laptop design as the pointing device is integrated within the keyboard. Unfortunately for reasons unbeknownst to me the TrackPoint has drastically lost popularity since its introduction in 1987. Now the only way one can purchase a laptop with this feature is by selecting a one particular model of a Lenovo laptop (Thinkpad).

Blackboard

For this blog post I will deviate from my usual topics and discuss the Blackboard Academic Suite. Blackboard is the system that Union College uses to facilitate interaction between teachers and students. The system is good in that it provides a semi-unified system where users can receive and submit information for their classes. I'm hesitant to say that the system is completely unified because not all classes use it. While this is not technically a design fault its still inconvenient to goto different systems for different classes.

Blackboard Academic Suite - Macroeconomics

Another annoyance is the fact that the button layout is not standardized between classes. For example the above is for my macroeconomics class while this is for my econometrics class.