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New Cell Phone Typing Solution
merlin_jim writes "Found this article on MSNBC about a new Cell Phone typing solution. It uses silicon sensors that can recognize the "shape" of each finger. The meaning of each key changes depending on which finger you use to press it; index finger for A, middle finger for B, etc. Unused finger/key combinations can be assigned to functions like ring volume." Watch out for those pop-up advertisements on your way into MSNBC. This is an idea I never really thought about for single handed typing input. A very cool idea.
I was typing, but I figured out I can't type any letter past the letter J.
Damn.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
This is going to prove a problem for all those "index-finger" typers out there.
( wh ere's that damn '~'?)....click...
click...click...click...click...click..........
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
...except that I use the thumb to press every key on the cellphone, holding it with the rest of the fingers.
If we have to use every finger, this means you suddenly need to use both hands just to use the phone - not a step forward.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
`F', not `B'? I'm pretty sure that's what I mean when I use _my_ middle finger.
:)
Most humans use their opposable thumbs with cellphones.
IBM has been developing stuff like this for years, but little credit is given to them.
typing solutions aside, pointing devices without the devices!
when will the future be now?
--donabal
Safety First Day?
There is only one problem with this. I type with my thumb on my cell phone. That way I can hold it in my hand and type with my thumb, useing only one had. To do this you would have to hold the phone in one hand and type with the other, there by makeing it less convenient. Maybe you could do something like four buttons on the side of the phone and the combination you press them in let's you do different things. Like a cording keyboard.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Even though I never quite understood why my fellow Germans write so many messages on their teeny-weenie pieces of Finnish or German ingeniouity (or just plain Taiwanese ingeniouty, if you're gonna be nit-picky), they will have to love this. I've seen cell phones that no longer had writing on their buttons because they'd been pressed so much in the process of writing important messages like "I was just thinking about you" or "I'll be running 3 minutes late" and the like.
Is the backside of almost all cell phones is wasted space. Put a small keypad with a slip cover over it and give the user a stylus to type with. For that matter, put a one or two line LCD display there so you can see just the last word or words typed.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Like 'F' and 'U' when press really HARD with my Middle finger. Easy to learn, and natural too :)
What, me worry?
What if it is cold outside, and you are wearing gloves?
www.eFax.com are spammers
It's new, it's hype... it isn't fair to come with facts here... You have to be excited about that! Didn't you know?
Because the volume of sold phone isn't more rising, they have top bring something new, that everyone must have. BUY IT!
Or you're responsible it the whole marketing-bubble collapses!
PS: ouups... seems i forgot the tags
And if you are missing a few fingers, what is one to do? If you're missing your middle finger, you are already disadvantaged in communications when you're driving. Hopefully that doesn't spread to telephones.
I didn't read the article to avoid the popups, so kill my karma if it was answered in the article.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Watch out for those pop-up advertisements on your way into MSNBC.
That's what the middle fingers function will be for...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
the shape of my middle finger determines how hard i'm trying to 'F' that key to work
my blog
I wonder exactly how much thought is given to people missing fingers or with deformities.
Probably none.
I bet it wont make mainstream for that reason no matter how cool it is.
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
This looks interesting but expensive to implement (the article says $1 per sensor for 1 key and then you need to license & implement the technology). It seems to me that it would be easier to add 3-4 more buttons to an SMS phone that were pressed simultaneosly with the "letter" buttons. Since 2 hands are needed to operate the finger differentiating method, it won't matter if you use 2 hand for this "chord". In particular, those of us that thumb-type on a cell can just use both thumbs.
Just an idea....
This is actually a better idea than using it on cell phones.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
Another use of the technology would be for video game controllers. Instead of placing multiple buttons on a controller (Sony's controller for the PlayStation 2 has eight buttons, not even counting the four direction buttons and the start and select buttons), a single button or a few buttons could be used for all the functions, with each finger denoting a particular action.
This would mean a fundamental change to gaming interaction. Instead of training our hands/fingers to move according to a certain button pattern on an input device, we would need to train our hands/fingers to react in different combinations.
Take a simple example: Imagine you are sitting in a completely closed off room (some isolated test environment) and you are told that you need to press buttons (provided in the room) to get food and water. So you learn to press this button over here to get food and that button over there to get water, and so on. Now, the test environment changes and removes the buttons from your little room. Now, you must learn to perform certain actions to get food and water like raising your right hand for food and raising your left hand for water.
Would this change of approach be benificial to gaming?
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
How does his system account for the different shapes of different peoples' hands? Do you have to calibrate it for your own fingers, or can anyone use it? For example, what if a woman, with more slender fingers used the phone? How would it be able to tell the difference between a fat index finger and a regular thumb?
It doesn't seem too promising to me, mainly because there simply isn't any algorithm which can account for the widly varying differences in human geometry, especially the hands.
I'd like to see it work before I would incorporate in my phone, and just not work for me. Take ten people with odd shaped fingers and see if it works.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
A similar feature could also be used for those public internet kiosks, which have no mouse, but just a touch screen. Now the age-old question "How to you right-click on these beasts?" has an answer: use the little finger rather than the index .Didn't work so far, but with this technology, it will ;-)
The day that MS is going to spam my cellphone, I'm going to headbang my keys I think.
42 + 1 = 42
Seriously folks, once the world gets over the whole one-key-per-letter rut that they're stuck in, alternative keyboard models like chordic will really start to pick up.
:)
You can probably get away with chordic on a cel phone if you change the form factor a little. Imagine a phone that you carry at your side, in a fist, until you are done dialling or writing notes or whatever. It could even have a wireless connection to your various wearable devices so you never have to worry about switching keyboards. Imagine, stylus in one hand, phone in the other, and headset in ear. You'd be an unstoppable nerd machine!
Of course I can imagine geeks having a hard time learning 5-digit letter codes. After all, who would want to learn something like that? Not me. No siree. I'll just happily write bad letters with my palm and scribble on my newton and slow myself down with bulky physical keyboards.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
I understand that in the US you mostly use your phones for talking. However, in other parts of the world, people also use them for text messages. Although these are not novels, even a 150 character message is pretty slow to enter, so a faster input method would definately help.
Actually, I saw a solution to this earlier this week (at least, it's a solution if you're using a recent build of Mozilla)...
in prefs.js (in the linux version, it's in ~/.mozilla), add this line:
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
it kills popus that ocur during page loading, but still allows other popups on the page to work properly (like on my bank's web page)...
I can't see this being easier to use than the dictionary idea employed on Nokia phones (and probably others too). It gets you one push on each key and you can do it with your thumb. The newish Nokia 3330 even has multiple dictionaries so you can SMS in different languages. Admitadly it is a little clumsy when it doesn't know the word you're after, but once you've taught it your friends' names, you don't run into this too often.
and i don't care that it is fingers he are talking about, 10 individual fingers on a phone as tiny as any nokia is not only embarassing, but impractical.
a rudimentary stylus pane and something like graphitti would be infinately more practical.
i for one would stear clear of any appliance that wanted me to learn some obscure dvorkian-esque ten fingered gymnastics to enter in "John Walsh - Home".
I sympathize with people that want to see a better interface implimented so they can text message, but this is hokie, regaurdless of the of the two patents and the $50,000 VC and the writeup in MSNBC...
in the words of Steve Martin, "That was shit one, this is shit two..."
I would really love to see a manufacturer integrate a twiddler(TM) into the side of the phone.
To me this makes perfect sense as that's generally where your fingers are anyway. Except of course for the phones that are too small to even hold normally.
But to me this would be ideal. Especially if you imagine them one day making this into a full-function wearble.
I'm salivating already.
without looking at the keys, and using all ur 5 fingers ..? its hard . ... in one of the new 007 movies .. the bad guy would type with his right hand while the left hand was holding the keyboard from underneath. This way he was able to move around with the keyboard while typing. It looked sooo 'hacky' .. should be a nice way to impress the ladies!
I remember a while back
[alk]
I have just tried this approach for the last ten minutes, and I must confess, this one is not too easy. I wonder if, if this tech ever reached our mobiles, we would be faced with the same conversion as say for example, a QWERTY to DVORAK keyboard change.
People don't tend to change from something that they've grown accustomed to - the phones' interface hasn't really changed in years.
Nevertheless, I'd be excited to see what this brings.
My fingers are a bit too big to hit the buttons, so I usually end up pressing the buttons with my fingernails. I seriously doubt that I'm going to hit the buttons in the same spot so that it generates a similar pattern each time.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I'm developing an intelligent access control system for a client, running on a win32/linux combination system.
We have a biometrics component to do fingerprint recognition (amoungst other things), and one application we have is for general building access control.
But what is relevant to this article, is that we have different fingers (which are assigned to people, who in turn have security attributes) applied to different tasks... such as a index finger for normal opreration, pinkie for fire alarm, and middle finger for silent alarm (hostage situations)
I don't think we are the only people who have thought of this though...
We have a label maker at work, and since it's a narrow "box" basically, there are several rows of letters and numbers.
Sounds easy to type in your message in the little LCD thing, right?
Wrong. No matter how many times I use it, my typing speed drops dramatically, since I spend most of my time looking for the right letter to hit. Yet, on my Qualcomm, I can punch in a name much easier.
Don't most people hold the phone with fingers and type with thumbs? Everyone I know does, same for two ways and small PDA keyboards.
A cute idea, but I have a feeling that it will not be well recieved.
What we need is to organize the keypad such that the most frequently used letters are first.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Well if people stopped using silly IE or retarded Opera and invested a little time into compiling mozilla then we wouldn't need to worry about pop-ups with a handy little option added to prefs.js
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
And amazingly I get no more pop-ups.
*duh!*
_ system/garage_door_opener/wristwatch/shoe_shiner/d og_whistle/ass_whiper/microwave_oven?
Get a wireless PDA and learn the script . It's not hard.
I'm amused at how people want everything all wrapped up into one...
What about an all-in-one:
Phone/PDA/mp3_player/digital_camera/webcam/gaming
(groan)
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Surprising of course since Taco has of course thought of all the other great ideas ever imagined.
"dcbadcbadcba" - what do you mean to type ? Oh, nothing I'm just impatent.
How about just putting one button on cell phones and have everybody learn morse code. :)
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Look at a Motorola StarTac.
It has three buttons on the SIDE of the unit.
They have various functions.
Is it so hard to imagine pressing one of these
3 buttons at the same time as the keypad to
select an alpha character, and pressing only
the keypad to select a numeral?
This approach has been used with several
factory-floor handheld terminals since the
late 1970s, starting with Termiflex Corp of
Nashua, NH (usa).
Yes, the 3 buttons are a tad close together,
and yes, holding the phone in your right hand
while pushing the keypad with your left is
clearly a "left-handed" operation.
But nothing is stopping the creation of a
"right handed" version, is there?
Science is the art of infallibility, perpetrated upon non-scientists
If you're dialling(? keying?) a number instead of a letter, the middle finger should produce a 4 as shown
here.
For UK users, please dial 6, for metal freaks, please dial 18.
I know, i know.. when I press it with middle finger it calls my boss...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
when I'm trying to dial a number while driving.
I'm wondering if this will fall under prior art because the middle finger already represents the letters m, o, t, h, e, r, f, u, c, k, e, and r? Just a thought.
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
How often do you have to enter a lot of text with only one hand free?
These sensors could be installed in artificial breasts - automatically warning jealous husbands when a finger other than their own is touching the breast.
Thank you very much - I'll be here all week.
XML causes global warming.
Now if we could only find an easier way to clean the keyboard..
Moreover, different people have different finger shapes - I have seen people with a larger index finger than the middle finger or of irregular shapes due to accidents. Will they be incapable of using these phones? Discriminating people due to their finger shapes is also very innovative!
Extending this technology to other input methods in Asia (Chinese and Japanese) will be awkward to say the least.
¦ ©® ±
Although this technology can be used to assign function to all ten fingers, it looks like they will only need three or four fingers for the cell phone apps. That's just one hand, so you won't have to put the phone down.
It's still a pain, I'd rather hit one button a few times than try to remember which finger to use to hit the button. (For the record, I use my index finger for typing on a cell phone, I don't see how so many people use their thumb. Must have some big buttons....)
This just seems like too much of a hassle just for entering numbers to the internal phone book, something I do rarely, and for sending emails from a phone, something I never do.
-Space for rent
I have been a touch typist (including keypad operation) for about 20 years, and to try to use a keypad in such a new way would be extraordinarily difficult. I would liken it to being able to switch between QWERTY and Dvorak keyboards at will with no loss of speed. AFAICR, that was one of the factors that doomed the Dvorak keyboard, and will continue to doom alternative keyboard layouts for some time. The barrier to entry is too high.
As a switchable feature, I think it's a wonderful idea, but a note to the designers: PLEASE, default it to OFF.
Keypress detected...
analyzing...
Its not the pointer...
Its not the index finger...
Its not the ring finger...
Its not the pinky...
Its not the thumb...
OH MY GOD!
ILLEGAL USE OF PHONE DETECTED!!!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Anyway, cyclic typing is the best possible way to do blind typing (for example, while driving, in order to keep your eyes on the road) and DictAssisted typing is usually the fastest way to type (except when you use a lot of words not in the dictionnary).
The problem I see with this is that there are still plenty of people who don't know when to single click, double click, right click, etc. Will these same people be able to remember which finger they should use to press a certain button to make it do what they want?
Sure, if it's just typing letters, and teh letters are on the keypad, it's a simple case of looking @ it and figuring it out. But the article talks about other uses, like different functions that can be performed depending on the finger you use to press just one of these special buttons.... I think people might have the same "which button should I click" problem.
Place sig here.
Unfortunately my only attempt at using SMS in such a situation (Carnival, a couple of years ago) just showed how easy it is to saturate a network if 80%+ of the revellers all have phones turned on at the same time!
You could have one multifunction button on your phone, similar to the way most "send" buttons work presently. This one big button could have one of these special sensors and could be used in an endless variety of ways. Thumb for voice dial, index for phone book, middle for missed calls, ring for.... plus every menu, instead of having options 1-5, could have options based on your fingers. After a little getting used to, people would love this technology, I predict. It will be sort of like the function buttons on Scientific Calculators.
~ now you know
BRILLIANT!
I'm a young investor, and I'm more than willing to fund your idea, if it has a snappy name that we can tack '.com' to the end of...
Want an Aeron Chair?
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
As they say in Hawaii
17
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--
E_NOSIG
This is an idea I never really thought about for single handed typing input. wrote Commander Taco
So, how fast were you able to type "what are you wearing?" in the chat room?
I just tried it on my phone (simulated of course) and it seems like it'd be a LARGE step backwards from the current T9/etc that's on the market. I've used T9 and it works great, and do most of the typing by holding the phone with my hand and using my thumb on that hand only. I can get decent amounts done that way. (I have a Sony J5 BTW)... This way you're pretty much required to use 2 hands, which makes it pretty inconvenient for places where you only have one hand available.
And actually I doubt if it's any faster. You need to move your entire hand around and hit those small small keys with different fingers which is pretty awkward to do. I can't see this being much faster than T9, or what will soon be (give it a year or so) voice dictated anyways.
And besides, how much text do you ACTUALLY send on your cellphone? I use the email feature to CHECK email and send a 5 word reply. I use SMS to RECEIVE traffic/weather/etc updates and the occasional note by my friends. But if I need to talk with one of them, I call them! I have the phone right there and talking is BY FAR FAR FAR more efficient than any typing method would be.
If God gave us curiosity
Now this is innovation... keys that could be sensitive to the tip of the tongue... add a DNA analysis device to validate the user and block any thieves from using your stolen phone.
This won't catch on, and it would not work one-handed. You would have to place it on a surface of some kind to be able to press the keys with your fingers (I don't know about you guys, but when I'm typing on a cell phone, I use my THUMB), or be held with the other hand.
It also does not work with hunting-and-pecking, so, like just about every ass-headed typing scheme that has come along and failed to even make a DENT in qwerty (except maybe Dvorak, and some other keyboard layouts), it doesn't really have a learning CURVE so much as a BRICK FUCKING WALL you would have to vertically climb before the thing becomes even remotely useful.
I tried the idea, and there's about a 4x typing speed increase over the regular method. It's very easy to learn, because you don't have to memorize anything. For example, the 3 key has "DEF" written over it. How hard is it to learn that using your index finger would produce a "D", the middle finger a "E", and the ring finger a "F". I caught up with the idea nearly instantly, unlike the palm handwriting recognition, which forces you to learn a new alphabet (although that's not too hard either). From my experience with handwriting recognition, it is slow and error-prone from factors like writing size, speed, hand stability, grip and so on, and it forces you to always look at the screen. With this method you can touch-type without looking at the screen.
The main problems are that it forces you to hold the phone with the other hand, it will probably need to be calibrated for every user, and probably won't work if you're wearing gloves and so on.
But even after all, it's a simple and ingenious solution for most circumstances.
Phone makers just need to add an option to go back to the older method of typing, to handle those circumstances.
What about people who do not have use of all of their fingers(missing, ect.). Do we now make it so that they can not use a phone?
I think that disabled rights groups would be up in arms about phones that would use this technology.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Which letters would you assign to which fingers?
I'm thinking: A, C, D, I, M, O, and S should all be in the same group.
I'd be able to type "DMCA", "MS", "CIA", "SSSCA", or "Osama" with just my middle finger!
I don't know why nobody posted this before (or why it didn't get modded up), but on my Nokia 8260, and on my old Samsung SCH8580 there is a built-in dictionary.
The way it works is quite simple, if you try to type the word "message" all you have to do is press 6377243, and it automatically guesses the match, in this case the word "message". If there are more than one match, all it takes is pressing a button multiple times, to scroll through the list of matches. It has English, French and I believe Spanish (my phone is my coat pocket, and I don't feel like getting it).
I've been using my Nokia for quite a while with this system, and honestly I don't need anyting else. It's almost perfect, and the only difficulty is when you want to insert names, or numbers, but that only requires a couple of extra key presses.
So my question is why bother with weird finger press combinations, finger-sensing buttons when the best solution is already out there?!? I guess this is one way somebody is trying to make extra money on royalties, but I don't know...
What about those that have lost a finger due to an accident?
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I hope these folks keep in mind not everyone *has* ten good fingers. If used widely, it could create a whole new catagory of "disabled" people who could function perfectly fine the old way. (for example, how will all those poor shop teachers use their cell phones ? ;-)
Sounds kinda kinky. I would think one digit would be enough for most people.
Go ahead, mod me down! It's Friday, so I don't care!
Another point I don't believe has been mentioned was what if you want to perform action A and B at the same time but they require the same finger to be on different buttons, or one button to be pressed by two fingers. This situation occurs almost every second of every FPS game, and although some of these conflicts exist with present devices, they would pale in comparison with those introduced by this technology.
The driving factor behind this technology is maximum use out of limited buttons, by sacrificing movement complexity (and therefore increasing time required) and simultanious actions. Gamers don't need a small limit on the number of buttons they use, and they definitely need minimum time and simultanious actions. For these reasons, I believe this technology is exactly the opposite of what you'd want in a game controller.
The idea is OK, but multiple use keys are confusing enough. Multiple use fingers would need to be labelled. Maybe there would be a market in micro tatoos to label each of your fingers according to its functions.
I still think voice will be best, when it comes of age.
Does it need to be "trained" and, if so, what happens if I loan it to a friend? What if its freezing cold and I'm wearing gloves?
Dozings.com -- Its kinda funny... If you're as crazy as me.
This would be a great input method for tomorrow's 3G cellphones! But learning something like this is very complicated, ain't it?
From the women I've spoken with,
the tongue is much more effective
when used for writting cursive..
Sure, it takes a bit longer,
but makes the message more personal,
and that is greatly appreciated.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Why isn't there fingertip sensors that can detect where you would be typing if you were typing on a keyboard? I can type a hell of a lot faster on a real keyboard than I can a cellphone keypad.
AC's cheerfully ignored
Doesn't the middle finger usually signify the letters f&u not b?
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
Its all about the Visor Phone. Nothing else will do. Why type when you can write. Plus the added memory and sync with your computer.
The above is not worth reading.
Why Bother with trying to use different fingers.
Why not just do it by how long you hold it in.
IE: I push "1" it shows 'A' but I keep holding it in for a sec and it becomes 'b' etc.
Of course you'd have to have a speed adjust but it is much more natural and a lot easier to implement.
This is an idea I never really thought about for single handed typing input. A very cool idea.
I'm sure that, being geeks, we can certainly appreciate the, umm, usability aspects of single-handed input. (Or single-handed output, depending how you look at the situation.)
(Sorry.)