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I second that. If I'm going to learn something new, I'd rather learn to use a Twiddler, that way I can take it with me and use it wherever I go. I'm just waiting until I can afford both it and a PDA with a USB Host port (why doesn't the Zaurus include this?).

Yeah, and check out the enormous amount of finger/wrist/arm strain the user is experiencing while using it: {tendons snapping}

No, it's NOT a pr0n reference.

Man, I would so love to get a laptop with a HHK layout. Ahhhhh. :)

But with regard to your comment (MikeFM) about key order not doing anything, you might find this particular article interesting - I think there was a Slashdot story on this a while back:

http://www.visi.com/~pmk/evolved.html

It's essentially about an experiment to see if using genetic algorithms (with a computer) could help to "evolve" a more effective/efficient keyboard layout than Dvorak. The most interesting bit (to me at least) was how the guy adjusted his scoring rules. Note this quote in particular (just after he'd tried the first run and was testing the first "winning" keyboard layout):

The next step was to actually try using the layout. I spent a couple days with it, and learned that my layout evaluation function was just too smart for its own good. Too many words required complicated patterns using the fingers of the right hand. The word bottom convinced me that Dvorak was on to something when he designed a keyboard that maximized alternation between the hands.

(The insight is that hand alternation increases parallelism. When the fingers of one hand are hitting keys, the fingers on the other are getting into position atop the next keys. This should have been obvious, but it wasn't until I started the third experiment and saw some empirical timing data that I realized how much faster things are with high rates of hand alternation.)

Being a two-fingered typist yourself, you may simply not realise how important these factors are for a ten-fingered typist (BTW - no offense meant, but there's no way in hell I'd believe anyone could do even close to 100wpm with only two fingers. Try using a typing tester program of some kind and see just how far off you are ;-)). I think the only people that would find an "alphabetical" keyboard layout helpful would be "hunt-and-peck" typists (ie. they have to stop and look for every key, for every keystroke) - and even they might not find it that helpful.

Re: the Twiddler - I presume you're referring to this - http://www.handykey.com/? Looks interesting... I'd love to try one of those sometime and see how usable they are. But I agree, the price is a little off-putting at the moment. :)

Pete.

Google leads to all kinds of knowledge. Perhaps if you had known about it beforehand, you would have saved yourself some time.

Handkey Corporation
Datahand Ego Keyboard (These are incredible. Used them before.)
Matias Corporation (If you can run it, try their demo -- I found I could get used to this layout in less than 30 minutes)

There's a start. Remember Google.

Well if you've used a SUN recently (I have one on my desk at work), you'd probably know they have a full 8-something extra buttons. These include cut, copy, paste, stop, volume, and other such nonsense like that. To be honest, I don't use them, except for STOP. The new ones have USB connections on the back, so they're actually somewhat nice because they plug into anything. Having extra buttons can be fun if you like to play with your keyboard mapping.

If you want to go the other direction, the whole wearables scene has come up with some good ones, especially the twiddler.

And finally, if you're interested in other keyboards that might be questionably functional but still look cool, you can find virtual keyboards, a lit keyboard, and a rollable keyboard. But I think in your situation, you might find the twiddler the best bet for "cool and useful item".

handykey

the #1 keyboard used by wearable computer researchers...

one handed keyboard just for you :-)

How about an ipod sized box, with one of these for an input device and something like this for a display? Of course, all with a six hour battery supply.

How do you get by with so few keys?
You can see the support problem he's talking about here.
The sexiest of the lot, but not handheld
This one's straight outta sci-fi

None of these have a pointing device. It seems to me that if you want to type with one hand, you might want to mouse with the same hand. I sent McKown an email to that effect, suggesting that he integrate a small trackball into his design.

HandyKey Twiddler 2The Twiddler2 is a pocket-sized mouse pointer plus a full-function keyboard in a single unit that fits neatly in either right or left hand. The Twiddler2 plugs into both keyboard and mouse PS/2 ports on any computer that accepts standard PS/2 mouse and keyboard input. WearClam: A Wearable Input InterfaceThe WearClam is an wearable Input device, developed for those situations where you need keyboard-like input nearly all the time. It is an ergonomic ring which resembles a real Clam's shape and as such it could be considered as a wearable interface for a wearable computer. L3 Systems WristPC KeyboardL3 Systems has developed the WristPC Keyboard for portable and wearable computer applications. The WristPC is a rugged QWERTY keyboard with a standard PC keyboard interface. The housing is a black anodized aluminum. Completely sealed, it can operate in the rain and other harsh environments. Fitaly One-Finger KeyboardThis "keyboard" is optimized for entry with a single finger or with a pen, as is the case on a pen computer or a computer with a touchscreen. The Fitaly One-Finger Keyboard minimizes pen or finger travel as well as hand travel. Tactex smart fabric technologyTactex's Smart Fabric technology enables the manufacture of both expressive and rugged control surfaces, which can be presented in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and surface finishes. A retail product, the MTC Express, is about the size of a mouse pad, and is produced for Mac and Windows platforms. Senseboard virtual keyboardSenseboard (tm) is a virtual keyboard, designed for the millions of mobile computer users, struggling with their tiny or nonexistent keyboards when trying to communicate or type. The VK hand mounted devices allow the user to type on any surface as if it were a keyboard. Sensors in the units measure the finger movements and artificial intelligence and a language processor determine appropriate keystrokes or mouse movements. Thunbscript Input DevicesThumbscript (TM) is a patented universal text entry system for mobile people and devices. Equally at home with Pen based devices like the Palm Pilot and keypad devices like your telephone or TV controller, Thumbscript offers users a single system that is simple, inexpensive to implement and easy to use because it is visual. FrogPad keyboardThe "FrogPad" is a 19-key device that uses patented simultaneous key function change technology to emulate a full-size keyboard, and requires a fraction of the physical space. Kord Interface TechnologyKord (R) Interface Technology (Kord [R] IT)is a suite of hardware and software that creates "an ambidextrous, chordic Human Machine Interface HMI, suitable for any computing device". Essential Reality P5 GloveTo digitally "walk" through an online room or actually "pick up" objects in a video game requires the ability to manipulate in three-dimensions. Not through complicated keystrokes but by the simple movement of your hand in space.

This similar product has been around for a number of years:

The Twiddler...

-sam

-sam

There is a one handed mouse/keyboard combo, more of a hocky puck with buttons on it that you hold called Twiddler from Handy Key . I've not trieded it, but I've always been meaning to.

There is a one handed mouse/keyboard combo, more of a hocky puck with buttons on it that you hold called Twiddler from Handy Key . I've not trieded it, but I've always been meaning to.

Sorry about your wreck and being laid up.

Even though I have two fairly functional hands, I've often thought how nice it would be to use one of these devices, particularly at meetings, where it would gauche to layout a laptop and using a PDA pen is less than satisfactory. I'll have to admit that furiuosly chording one of these devices in your lap under the table could look kind of suspicious.

Using chorded input on the one handed device seems to allow something like 4K possible input "characters", so even if you needed to map every emacs major mode's lisp function to a key you'd have an easier time than with a typical QWERTY board.

The advertisement suggests you can learn to use one of these in about a weekend. If you do, let me know if you like it or not.

The wearable offers you what you can't get out of a PDA. Instant access.

The PDA has an appointment book, but if you want to check it, you have to pull it out, open it up, turn it on, go to the appointment book, and then look at the days. This takes time. A wearable is already on, you just have to bring up the appointment book. The alaram feature reminds you when a meeting is going to happen. Your wearable could keep your next 2 appointments in view, and with GPS and access to MapQuest or something similar, could tell you about how long it would take, with approximations for traffic.

Pulling out your PDA and trying to take notes in Graffiti is painful - it's very hard to keep up with a conversation. But with a wearable, you can type instead of write. Bringing a keyboard may not be an option, but a Twiddler allows you to type quite quickly with one hand, far better than Graffiti, anyway.

Imagine access to financial reports at the meeting with the boss without a laptop. Imagine in-view access to directions as you look for a client's office. Imagine sending someone an e-mail when you remember to do it. Imagine updating your to-do list while on the phone on the subway, without fear of dropping something. Imagine making changes to the database while the meeting is going on. Imagine never worrying about forgetting the CD you burned becuase you have the data with you. Imagine never worrying about someone else using your computer and messing up your settings.

If none of these things interest you, how about: Imagine reading slashdot during the meeting. Imagine reading slashdot on the subway. Imagine looking for new jobs while during the new policy meeting. Imagine being able to correct people by getting actual data at your fingertips. Imagine watching the Simpsons while you stare at a monitor covered with Excel sheets. Imagine organizing your MP3 collection during business hours. Imagine EverQuest.

You can get a set of glasses (Model EG-7) with a prism built-in so there is no bulky object hanging in your field of vision. There is a bump on the side of the glasses for the screen itself, and a wire runs down behind the ear, easily concealable under a shirt.

You can already walk down the street with an earphone/microphone on, because you probably have a cellphone.

You can use a Twiddler for input, along with speech (maybe in the future). Perhaps soon we will have a Bluetooth Twiddler, allowing you reduce the number of wires.

In fact, incorporating Bluetooth would be a great way to improve the portability/functionality of your wearable. Connect to your cellphone with Bluetooth instead of using a cable or having a separate cell modem. Connect to a printer (Bluetooth or 802.11 for this application) and print something out on your way to the meeting. Your microphone/speaker could be Bluetooth, so there are even fewer wires (though the battery/communications module is a little bulky still).

With some dynamic networking you could have your system use Bluetooth to the phone while you weren't in range of a wireless network, and switch automatically, setting up NFS/VPN/SSH/etc connections as the network conditions change.

The guy is typing with his thumbs! And the icons look pinhead-size. This is all very neat how we can shrink things smaller and smaller, but... ergonomics anyone? How about keeping your eyesight past your 20's?

I think the whole PDA/Tablet PC/Subnotebook thing is in general pretty silly. For general use they are horrible. Better to get something like the Hitachi WIA with an input device like the Twiddler and keep your wrists and eyes healthy.

Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon

Okay, the Cyborg thing is cool, and I've been wanting to do that myself.

But $100,000 worth of hardware on your person, out of the research lab?? Please give your grants/donations to someone with an ounce of common sense.

Sure, i can understand where you'd want to have this around the house or even the workplace so you can see how it works IRL, but on an AIRPLANE?!? Dude, pack up your equipment in safe, padded crates, ship them with INSURANCE, and take a $600 laptop with you instead.

There's no way i'd ever have more than a couple thousand bucks worth of anything on my person outside of a controlled environment, EVER. I'm not even comfortable lugging around $3000 projectors for presentations!

The ugly truth is that airport security are little more than the FAA's version of BOUNCERS. Don't bring anything valuable on an airplane. Spend some money and ship it instead.

The typeing injury faq has gobs of information about keyboards. It can be found here

Personnally I use a Twiddler. Some folks don't care for them but I love mine. There is a bit of learning curve and the mouse buttons can be a bit squirlly. It has 16 keys, 4 modifyers, and a track point. You type by makeing cords. The track point moves the mouse and puts the 16 keys into mouse button mode(little squirlly).

There is gobs of information on this page.
http://www.tifaq.com/keyboards.html

Personally I use a Twidder. I have used it for about a year now and still like it very much. There is a bit of learning curve and the mousing can be a little squirrly sometimes.

If neither of the two criteria is given, the technology might still succeed - in a niche market. I can see this technology in some industrial environment, where the operator has only one hand available. But the mass market? Nah....

Likewise, I've seen a dozen companies come and go each with their own HUDs. All were available in limited quantities for OEM/prospective LARGE purchases, but the number of wearable displays available to consumers is pretty small.

So it's not like people haven't been trying. It just hasn't taken off yet. Sony's new research into gesture recognition may be a move in the right direction, but it may be a while before there's a ready solution that anybody can buy.

A twiddler is a single-hand chordal keyboard, folks. He's not necessarily trolling.

They use serial ports - There's a driver for the Palm Pilot - Don't know about the PocketPC, though.

As for the noise factor of keyboard clatter, I have a 2-lbs sub-notebook that is nearly silent. The sound of the air filtering system in most lecture halls or boardrooms is much louder.

If people want a SMALL keyboard that is pretty quite, they should instead try a chording "keyboard" like the Twiddler. It's quite, small, unobtrusive and it is easy to learn how to use it with a training program.

I have such a webpad: A Fujitsu Stylistic 1000: 486 CPU (fine for simple X / browsing), attachable PS/2 keyboard(I use the Twiddler II), VGA port (for CyVisor or Monitor) for when the 640x480 8" display isn't enough, radio pen, PCMCIA HD (270MB comes standard, 2GB available), 2 additional type II PCMCIA slots, IRDA, Serial, Parallel, and a 3750mAh battery lasts four or five hours on a charge. I'm running RedHat 7.0, but the cleanest install I've heard of is Debian. One can often purchase them surplus for around $100. HSC Electronics is currently out of stock, but you may find them elsewhere.

Dude, I'm rolling on the floor. Literally. Good thing I'm using a Twiddler2(tm) or I wouldn't even be able to type.

-nb

The "traditional" wearable computer input device seems to be the Twiddler - a one-handed chording keyboard. That's what the MIT Wearables crew all seem to use.

Unfortunately the way they do augmented memory is by typing in the things they see to see if there are notes against them already - the newer things use GPS and spatial detectors to try and avoid that for static objects, and IR-beacons to avoid it for moving (but known) things.

does anyone know if this is the legit link?

Try this. Apparently they're moving right now.

You could use one of these, I think. It's "A combination keyboard and mouse that weighs 4 ounces and fits in the palm of your hand."

I like the Xybernaut's design, yet it's price is beyond my means (and I'm usually an early adopter of geek chic). If you could offer just a few more components for sale, or a construction service, that's competitive with the big guys, I think you could make a decent living. As a previous poster mentioned, Ebay works.

The problem is human factors -- getting people used to a new idea. People are used to the 1 button - 1 function idea. Plus you have the training issue: there are not a lot of people who are capable of teaching themselves touch-typing; there are probably fewer who could learn how to chord without an instructor.

How about the ability to attach peripherals? A USB output port could let you plug in a Twiddler, a bigger monitor when you dock, whatever. We have the power to make these into ultra-small laptops, or even wearables now. I know the have USB input, but has any palmtop added usb output yet?

The keyboard design you mention fashioning "out of bits of brass" reminds me a bit of the Twiddler chording keyboard ... Have you ever worked with a Twiddler, BAT Personal Keyboard, Bellaire CyKey, or other "nonstandard" PC input device before?

I've been pondering building my own wearable for several years now. I was fortunate to have some exposure to Thad Starner at Georgia Tech. I saw quite a few variations on the wearable in the halls of the College of Computing, but my main interest was in the "build-your-own" category, for which Thad has a few links for on his web site.

A $2K price tag is certainly more appealing than a $5K-$6K, but what's the point when you can build your own for less? Laptops are so thin/cheap/powerful these days that, combined with a Twiddler and some form of audio/video IO, you're set.

The Hitachi unit, on the other hand, has barely more horsepower than a handheld device. Do you really need a visor-ed CE device for $2K?

My preference for a wearable is the good old shoulder holster design. Not very roomy, but wearables should be small and lightweight. Wireless networking, CF Microdrive, Twiddler keyboard, and finally this amazing thing for display (this guy fits a HMD into normal sunglasses, and it looks 100% cool!!)

They should have included two Compact Flash slots. How am I going to get a 1 gig IBM MicroDrive and a IEEE 802.11b wireless lan card in there at the sime time? $2000 Wearable $400 Microdrive $200 twiddler2 $35 twiddler2 USB option gives you a small system with a big price tag $2635 but otherwise you are left with too little memory only a mouse input with the base system. It has potential we'll see.

I have studied the problem specially (for desktop though) and I see no good method of text input at all.

Firstly, forget about direct neural interface and speech input. The neural interface is terribly slow, the speech input cannot deal with programming language texts.

Then, forget about a stylus and touchscreen. Stylus is simply too slow, touchscreen will cover your screen with grease from your hands.

There is a nice product that looks promising - Alphagrip - but AFAIK it's still not in production, and I fear it has a lot of other problems, for instance, I cannot imagine how it can be used as a game device as claimed by inventors, or how the index finger can press UP.

Datahand looks the best and is ergonomic enough but is simply too big to fit in a laptop.Twiddler IMHO requires too non-ergonomic fingers movement severely limiting the input speed.

The following methods look promising:
Keybowl that can be emulated with a pair of analog joysticks taken from Sony PS Doubleshock joysticks,
Wlonk - a 10-key macroprogrammable chording keyboard (You should design the mouse, driver and formfactor yourself),
and variations of TheBAT, DataEgg, 7KEY a.s.o (7-key 1-hand chording keyboard. Are you going to study the chords?)

Remove all SPAM from my email to answer.

Call me dumb, but the thing you have bought only has 16 keys - what's up with that? Different modes I suppose, but the picture suggests that each key only has one use (there is a clearly marked 'A' on one button). I don't get it 8-)

-Kraft
----------------------------

Call me dumb, but the thing you have bought only has 16 keys - what's up with that? Different modes I suppose, but the picture suggests that each key only has one use (there is a clearly marked 'A' on one button). I don't get it 8-)

-Kraft
----------------------------

If you want to go portable or even just a travel keyboard, try a Twiddler. It means learning a how to "chord key" but it is reasonably fast to learn and includes a mouse AND a keyboard in ONE HAND.

I have started using the Twiddler while riding my recumbent bike. It is still slower for me than QWERTY, but I can easily type without looking and by using a single hand. I will use this to type during boring sections of my ride across the US, May-July 2002.

The Twiddler has to be much easier to learn than the wierd pair of typing spheres in this article.

Yeah..its called the Twiddler. Made by HandyKey.

Deanasc:
BTW I chose a Palm vs the other PDA's as it seemed to have the best handwriting recognition for my way of holding a pen.
Why are people using grafitti instead of the Twiddler2 for Palm input?

This comment is an attempt to call a lot of people names, but without being a troll.
Here goes...
About a month ago, the Playstation 2 was released in Ireland. On the day of its release, thousands of people queued up overnight outside shops all over Dublin, frantic in their hopes. People outside were offering hundreds of pounds over the odds to people who were walking out of the shops with their little blue boxes.
THen I wandered in around lunchtime, handed over the receipt, and walked out of the shop minutes later. No hassle, and all it took was a reservation two months before the fact.
So Cowboyneal, and thousands of others worldwide writhing with jealousy: I've no sympathy. But I do have a playstation.

Oh, yeah. The topic. If anyone wants to buy me a present, I'd love a Twiddler 2

Of course, to combine the HHC with a Palm V, you need yet another connector thingamabob, but hey, what price consumer geekdom?

(Sorry if this gets posted twice, /. seems /.'ed)

How about something as small as both of these that you can use while walking down the street. The twiddler is a one handed chorded keyboard the only requires one had.

There is currently a happy hacking cradle which allows the use of PS/2 keyboards with the palm. I hope someone makes a springboard module to use a PS/2 keyboard with the Handspring Visor, before I have to make it myself...

Links are made like this:


<a href=
"http://www.handykey.com">Twiddler</a>.

For example:
Twiddler

The Twiddler2 looks to be a nice chorded keyboard.
--