Slashdot Mirror

BAT as divined by Doug Engelbart has a big disadvantage: You operate it with your left hand while mousing with the right one (Or else you use your right hand for both tasks with speed loss). You use only one hand dividing your speed in two. The alternative may be a 2-handed BAT-like device (mouse inside) since in 14-button configuration you can devote keys to the most used letters and chord only remaining letters. It may give you additional comfort but not the additional speed. Additional speed may be obtained by using the steno machine paradigm and by doubling the number of keys in a Chordite fashion. You may even place a row of keys above the hand and use your extensor muscles to press them up.

Alphagrip made a good job excluding a hunt-and peck and dedicating keys to fingers but it IMHO still requires quite precise movements (pressing up and down with index fingers).

Of course, there is a retraining process. I can afford it since the hunt and peck method used in usual keyboards is both highly inefficient and unavoidable. You may keep your hands over F and J on a mini keyboard like typewriter or Happy Hacking Keyboard but the more keys and mice the worse.

Check out John W. McKowns one-hand keyboard.

It really seems that the standard keyboard is an antiquated input device. Hopefully it will be replaced in the near future. Along those lines, there was a thread here on Slashdot a few months ago about the chordlite one-handed keyboard. Has anyone tried to build one of these? Are there any other 'fit to your hand' type of keyboards out there? I'd love to build and try one... But Radio Shack scares me.

So close, but yet so far. Give us this plus this. That is, a portable chordal handset with braille output. Then connect it to either a blackberry like device, or one of those AIM cellphones.

Can you imagine? I walk to work every day with my phone logged into AIM. I chat with people while I walk. I try not to step in potholes. The convenience of chatting and holding the cellphone at my side while waiting for the vibrating alert set me to thinking...

Iduno. Y'all want a portable SSH client that you don't have to look at in order to use? Without the requirement for a screen, I don't care how big the device is. It goes in my backpack. The input/output is all tactile.

I wonder how hard it is for sighted folks to learn braille. I wonder how hard it would be to mount braille-like output on a small handheld device. Dunno if that's possible, really.

They might do this already for jet pilots. With the engine noise of your own jet, there's no way in hell you'd hear another plane, even if it were two feet away from your cockpit.

Some poster on /. said they simulate the sound of nearby objects for exactly this purpose.

The UI innovation *I* want is for this guy to start talking to these guys and get me a complete computer interface that fits in my hand. It'd beat the hell out of a blackberry...

I quote:

"2002 08 06 Patent issued, website up."

While I wholeheartedly applaud this guy's efforts, I think he's missing the possibilities of using the upward motion of the finger as well as the downward. That having been said, I think this is fantastic. This might push me over the edge to ditch my 19" trinitron for some glasses.

For those who don't want to go through NYT, you can go right to his site at chordite.com.