Design
The Zippy BT-637 measures 1.04 by 7.28 by 14.35 inches (HWD). For most, the keyboard’s design will be hit or miss. Its brushed aluminum palm rest and frame adds a bit of class, but the keys look rather cheap—much like the ones found on the AZiO Wireless RF Keyboard ($69.99 list, 3 stars), which looked like the letters had been stuck on with adhesive. Located directly in the center of the keyboard along the palm rest is a multi-touchpad with the right- and left-click buttons located on either side rather than underneath the touchpad. This orientation is a little awkward when navigating, but is easily remedied by utilizing the touchpad’s one-finger touch to “left click” or three-finger touch to “right click” on items. Other multi-touch features include two-finger scrolling.

The touchpad was spacious enough to browse through Web pages and scroll through documents, but for anything long term you may want to supplement your couch surfing with Logitech’s appropriately named Couch Mouse M515. The Zippy BT-637 typing experience is good; I’m a personal fan of traditional layouts, as opposed to the chiclet-style like on the Apple Wireless Keyboard ($79 direct, 4 stars). Unfortunately, the Enter key is oversized, taking out the \ and | key completely, and the right Shift key has been undersized for the sake of making the arrow keys normal-sized rather than thinning them down.

On the right side of the keyboard are a series of touch buttons that consist of the Touch Lock (turns the touchpad on and off), Home (brings up a browser window or brings you to your designated homepage), Email, Back, Forward, Search, Mute, Refresh. These were a nice addition, but I found they weren’t very responsive and often took multiple presses for my finger to register.

Along the top of the keyboard are the F1-12 keys that also double as Fn keys that do everything from open your “My Pictures” folder to adjusting volume and control your media (i.e. play/pause and skip).

The keyboard has an on/off switch on its underside, which may help conserve battery life. According to AVS Gear the BT-637 can last up to 2 months on two AA batteries (included in packaging).

Features
The BT-637 connects to devices via Bluetooth, a wireless technology. I was easily able to pair it with two PCs, a PlayStation 3, and my iPad 2. Each of these devices was set to a button, so I could switch to typing on my iPad 2, press a button, and switch to browsing on my PC. You can pair and assign up to 6 devices, which is more than enough.

The AVS Gear Zippy BT-637 offers a great feature set and solid performance, but its glitchy touch buttons, cheap-looking keys, and odd key layout keep it from taking the lead among our home entertainment keyboards. The Logitech diNovo Mini (4.5 stars), the Editors’ Choice in this category, is small and sports an innovative design. That and the fact that it has both wireless USB dongle and Bluetooth connectivity options (increasing its compatibility among older PCs) makes it a valuable asset in the living room. But its $149.99 (direct) price may scare most users away. So for those looking for a solid feature set that won’t break the bank, the Iogear 2.4GHz Wireless On-Lap Keyboard ($74.95 direct, 3.5 stars) is a good choice.

The account hijackings were a result of stolen passwords, likely by malware installed on victims’ computers or through victims’ responses to e-mails from malicious hackers posing as trusted sources. That type of hack is known as phishing. Gmail’s security systems themselves were not compromised, Google said.

The company believes the phishing attack emanated from Jinan, China. In addition to the U.S. government personnel, other targets included South Korean government officials and federal workers of several other Asian countries, Chinese political activists, military personnel and journalists.

“The Department of Homeland Security is aware of Google’s message to its customers,” said Chris Ortman, a spokesman for the agency. “We are working with Google and our federal partners to review the matter, offer analysis of any malicious activity, and develop solutions to mitigate further risk.”

The news comes a little more than a year after a separate hack originating from China affected Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In that case, attackers were able to break through Google’s security systems, and two Gmail accounts were hacked.

That cyber attack set off a series of events that eventually led to Google ending its agreement with the Chinese government to censor certain search results, and the company physically moved its servers out of the country.

This time around, the hack appears larger in scope — but Google itself was not attacked. A person with knowledge of the attack’s details said there was no apparent correlation between last year’s attack and this one.

A spokesman from Google declined to comment on how the company obtained the information about the most recent hack. Public information, user reports and a third-party hacking blog called Contagio was used to determine the scope, targets and source of the attack.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) said it notified the victims and disrupted the campaign.

The hackers were attempting to monitor the victims’ e-mails, and some users’ forwarding settings were altered.

The company urged users to “please spend ten minutes today taking steps to improve your online security so that you can experience all that the Internet offers — while also protecting your data.”

Google provided several examples of how Gmail users can better protect themselves from phishing attacks on its blog, including enabling a setting that allows users to login to their accounts only after receiving a verification code on their phones. The company also suggested that users monitor their settings for suspicious forwarding settings.