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One-Finger Keyboarding?
adubey writes: "Forget Qwerty, forget Dvorak; the best keyboard for palmtops may well be the Fitaly One-Finger Keyboard. " Kinda nifty idea actually, I'm wondering if we'll see one that would work for a wearable PC (like maybe
this guy from IBM).
Does this mean that if your computer locks up, instead of the 3-finger salute, you just "give it the finger"?
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
I mean, how am I supposed to do an alt-meta-shift-control-z? Oh wait, I don't have emacs on my PalmPilot, yet.
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Has anybody played with the demo? I'm not near a Windows box and can't get it on my palm right now.
I know, I know, I'm just a whiny geek, but what about Thumbcode? You mean I learned a whole system of typing on my hands to produce letters just so they could come up with yet another layout?!? C'mon, man! It's tough enough to learn to type on one keyboard with the continuously-shifting backslash problem, now there's ANOTHER layout?
All whining aside, however, this looks like a really ingenious step toward making wearable computers *USABLE*, as well!
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
Current slogan: "Concentrate all of your typing into a 'single point of failure' with the Fitaly One-Finger Keyboard!".
Tomorrow's slogan: "You have ten fingers. So why are you typing with only one? Use the Fitaly Ten-Finger Keyboard!"
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Great! Now I'll have that other hand free for... well, you know.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
We continually cheer new PDAs because of their "neat" features such as ultra high ammounts of memory, or their wireless ability. But when it really comes down to what PDA you buy, isn't the data entry interface the most important thing? I mean, if I'm sitting in a class, in order for me to take notes on a PDA, I have to enter data as fast as it's being said. With enough time to still listen and understand the lecture so that I might ask questions.
Because until the user interface on a PDA is advanced, we can't expect it to grow to it's fullest potential.
Using only one finger must get pretty tiring after awhile. Why limit yourself to just one finger when the majority of people have quite a few more fingers available?
It is pretty good, I've got it on my TRGpro.
It takes a while to get used to the new character placement, but the ability to capitalize a character by sliding it (sort of like a click-n-drag) makes entering names a lot faster. My typing is still as good as it's been (one concern people have had is that the Fitaly layout will interfere with typing).
The collapsable keyboard ($99) is worth it if you have to take notes at a meeting. Fitaly is fast, but I still find it faster to type than to tap. I should note that the collapsable keyboard is the smallest of all the PalmOS keyboards when folded up.
Nice idea, but the windows version is a software program. If it locks up it ignores your finger, liked bill cared anyway..... By the way no linux version? (is there a pen version of linux?)
I mean, people are pretty accustomed to just doing whatever it is they want to do (no matter how slowly), that they may resent being forced to learn a new keyboard. Also, when you're typing with a pen or with one finger, you're not gonna be typing that fast anyway, no matter how optimized the keyboard is. So I wonder what kind of a speed increase this scheme really offers. Finally, what is wrong with the graffiti system built into current Palm Pilots?
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Stephen C. VanDahm
But back to the point -- this isn't about one finger input, it's about pen input. Big difference. It's fast: I just bring my Palm to meetings now and don't bother with paper. I can read my notes, unlike my handwriting, and upload them to my desktop so I can store them with the rest of my electronic notes. I hate paper.
The product really works, and I just wish they could port InstantText to the Palm. Or Linux. It looks cool, but I'm not going to do my writing in Word 97 just to use it.
top 10 advantages to a one-finger keyboard:
10) easier to type "hunt-and-peckers unite!"
9) "i'm not flicking you off, i'm practicing typing on the ceiling".
8) if you get carpel tunnel in one finger, just switch fingers.
7) you can finger your computer in public without getting stared at.
6) don't have to worry about losing your career skills if you get your hand caught in the ceiling fan.
5)linux users can now finger() someone with a finger.
4) you can use two fingers to hold a donut and one to type
3) that leaves one finger left over for picking your nose
2) two words: pinky envy.
and the #1 reason to use a one-finger keyboard:
1) sometimes, there's just not enough room for two fingers.
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Also, I can say personally that even though I know QWERTY very well -- I type about 80 wpm -- that's with two hands. My experiences using QWERTY one-handed haven't been so positive at all, so if I were to regularly need a one-handed keyboard, I'd seriously consider something like this keyboard. Sure, you'd have to relearn a little, but that's just as difficult a transition (possibly easier) as going from two-handed QWERTY to one-handed QWERTY.
Francis Hwang
Do domain names matter?
That said, I don't see Fitaly replacing the standard mechanical keyboard. Where it might be useful, however is in touch screen devices like point-of-sale terminals or (especially) vertical-market devices for inventory tracking or insurance claims processing.
And to the people wondering what the "blank keys" to either side of "n" and "e", they're space bars, naturally.
Finally, I'm pretty sure the link in the article is obsolete. I use http://fitaly.com to get to Textware Solution's homepage frequently, and haven't seen a link to twsolutions.com in a long time.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
It would make much more sense to use a chording keyboard for an organizer - the Microwriter AgendA supported this a long time ago, but has unfortunately been discontinued. (BTW, I haven't been able to find a description of the AgendA's chording scheme - does anyone have a link?)
For a wearable, something like the Twiddler would make much more sense. What I would really like is an updated twiddler that plugs directly into the PS/2 (or USB) port, and with a Trackpoint (like in IBM Thinkpad laptops) instead of the imprecise tilting mouse sensor.
By reading the article, I learned that those are actually space keys.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
This seems very odd to me. If you use one finger, surely that's the whole hand occupied, so why not make use of the other 4 fingers? What's more, the single finger you're using is going to be racing around the place like a mad thing, and that's going to be uncomfortable.
I prefer the idea of the Quinkey chording keyboard, which has been around since the mid 80s at least, where each finger (or thumb) stays on one of 5 home keys, and input depends on chords. I've never bothered to learn such a thing, but it seems ideal for wearables and any application where you require a hand free.
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Wow, this is even better than Microsoft's keyboard. See http://www.mackido.com/Humor/MSKeyboar d.html. Control-Alt-Delete -- what more do you need with Microsoft?
But does your grandmother want to have a computer?
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As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I used Fitaly on my Palm for quite a while (until I discontinued use of the Palm, in fact). It was very easy to use and made the device a lot more useful in that I could get text in at a closer to "normal" rate. I envision future computing devices that incorporate a pen keyboard and a touch capable screen for the majority of the work. For major text needs (writing books, text mode programming/scripting, IRC) a regular ten-finger keyboard or something along those lines is obviously needed, but for web surfing, non-action games (which seem to require joysticks or such), graphics work, general GUI interaction, the Palm/Fitaly model is my preference. I like that direct interaction with the screen and like having a keyboard that is functional but does not require the hands to switch devices (from keyboard to mouse) by being part of the screen. Heck, if you're ambidextrous, the pen model makes you twice as efficient, right?
I do not have a signature
$ finger @twosolutions.com
finger: non-recoverable failure in name resolution.
I've written a program called gtkeyboard which uses this keyboard layout as one of its "possibilities". The keyboard is meant for all kinds of different applications (including possible wearable applications and things like keyboardless kiosks and the physically disabled).
The keyboard layout was originally given to me as the "opti" keyboard by one of the people who contributed code to the project. It actually is quite good for using a keyboard with one finger, or in the case of gtkeyboard, with the mouse, which is functionally equivalent to one finger really.
It is quite a good design, putting the spaces pretty much everywhere so that you can get to them from any key. With an average word length of 5 in English, it pretty much means that rougly 18-20% of your keystrokes are going to be spaces. Makes sense to have them in a convenient place, eh?
Most people wouldn't believe how much research goes into making these things the way they are. With this keyboard, they did a lot of tests training people to use it. As was expected, at the beginning people were actually a bit slower with it than with a qwerty keyboard because they didn't know where the keys were. As time went on though, they were able to VASTLY improve their speed over even the best speeds with qwerty. (remember, we're talking one finger here, not 10)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Ken Perlin (of Perlin noise fame) has developed this technology called Quikwriting that seems to facilitate a one-handed interface better than anything I've seen. I know it's not a keyboard, and I know it's yet another code you'd have to learn how to use, but it appears to me to be the most efficient techonology in this neighborhood. While you're at his site, you should check out his other user interface considerations.
I'm curious, what does Windoze CE use? Does it
just display a keyboard, or has M$ "innovated" their own version of Graffiti
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
...It's called the Morse code telegraph. :)
As a Fitaly and FitalyStamp user, I can say that the Fitaly keyboard is great, and it enables the palm to be useful for things like note-taking that Graffiti is IMO too slow for. I can manage 50+ wpm with my palm down on a table and typing english prose.
However, it does have its drawbacks:
No, a good touch-typist can type faster than his computer can understand him speaking, or faster than a poor orator can speak. Depending on circumstances and content, intelligible human speech gets up to 300 wpm in the "exceptional" range. 150 wpm is much more comfortable. I think you're going to have a hard time defending the claim that in order to be considered a "good" touch typist, you need to type 150wpm.
Reading the above paragraph, which has about 50 words longer than 3 letters, at a comfortable pace, took me 20 seconds. I know that reading aloud is often faster than speaking, since you don't have to stop to think, but this is not the case for all people, just as not all people can think properly while typing at full speed - even competent touch-typists.
Yes - the correct answer to the "computers don't understand speech" problem is to be part of the 1% or so of the computer-using population who can touch-type original, sensible text at 120+ wpm. Unfortunately, wishing doesn't make it so.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
If I'm sitting in my cubicle at work, I just can't see myself speaking out loud "Dear Honeybunch: Smoochie smoochie. Love your teddy bear", or "Mom, the doctor says I have cancer", or "My account number is 235655324". Even normal, nonprivate communication would become a burden, if everyone is speaking to their machines aloud all day long. Noise levels would become unbearable.
The keyboard/mouse combo definitely isn't the ultimate interface, but voice isn't either. An argument could be made for thought-recognition, but I think we're a long way from that yet. For now, I'll stick to my keyboard and mouse.
A long time. We don't know how the speech centers of the brain really work. We definitely don't have the ability to make the kind of electrode array needed to read the entire dataflow, and we lack the computational power to process that data in realtime (although that last is trivial compared to the first two).
It is something being actively worked on with sensory prostheses, but in order to directly read cognitively signifcant signals, we're going to have to obtain a much better understanding of mental processing. You're going to see true direct input about the same time neuroscience solves the strong AI problem (give or take a few decades).
At the current rate of knowledge increase, though, this should happen within the average Slashdotter's lifetime.
For most of us, I suspect some sort of combination of subvocalization pickup, EEG reading (for selection - a "that's it!" event, as per a previous /. story), and eyeglasses-like heads-up display with pupil tracking will eventually be the norm for wearable computing. It'll be a long time before implants are used as input devices by the mainstream of people.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Great for those AutoeroticBondageLine text chat sessions.
(backstory)
I don't see any number keys - also I assume you are typing IN ALL CAPS. (Yaay, go AOL).
:-) A normal tap is lowercase; a 'slide' is upper case (i.e. when you start on the letter's square, slide the stylus, and lift not on the square). It's a VERY quick way of getting mixed case; absolutely no need for shift.
Bad assumption.
Number keys are right there, on the right. I have no idea how you could miss them. Shift-number gives you a few symbols, and the rest are available by tapping one of four buttons which pops up a replacement keyboard picture (you can tap on the picture or on the Fitaly to get the symbol).
I'm quite happy with the result; it is indeed far faster with Fitaly than it was without. I have to say that I'd like to replace at least one of the auxilary keyboard modes with my own custom one (with my commonly used symbols).
-Billy
This layout, like other 'optimal' keyboard layouts, is tuned for normal English text. While I doubt that anyone is going to do some heavy-duty programming with a pen, I'd be interested to see whether any keyboard layouts have ever been optimized for computer languages like C++. Not only are relatively rare letters like xyzijk more likely to show up in variable names, but symbols are much more common than they are in normal text, yet few of them are unshifted keystrokes on a normal keyboard, and not even the most useful ones at that.