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Five Finger Keyboards
Tijaska writes "Mobile devices are becoming more capable all the time, but their small screens and keyboards limit their usefulness. This article shows ways in which five buttons located on the edges of a mobile could be used in combinations to generate 325 or many more different characters, making a full-sized keyboard unnecessary. If that sounds like a tall story, remember the case of the retired 93 year old telegraph operator who used a Morse key to send a text message faster than a teenager could send it via mobile phone (see here)."
I've been using PDAs forever -- starting with my original Newton MessagePad (I do miss it). Over the years, I've become accustomed to the tiny on-screen keyboards with no tactile feedback. I grow my right hand thumbnail long, file it down so I have a bit of an edge leaning left, and I can type VERY fast with it -- probably faster than the average layperson on a regular PC keyboard.
As my friends slowly pick up PDA phones without "real" keyboards, they've also mimicked my thumbnail mod and found they can type incredibly fast, especially with the faster processor PDAs (HTC Trinity is what I use) which offer almost no delay when typing. Disable any sound response, and you can type even faster.
I'm sure that the iPhone will make huge leaps in efficiency, but I'm happy with where I am with the "old fashioned" touchscreen typing. I've blogged, read and written on slashdot, and posted to forums from my tiny 320x240 screen, all because of a simple thumbnail mod.
Try it -- it may save you quite a bit of time, and not cause you to have to learn some new fandangled invention.
These single hand keyboards are called chord keyboards and a pretty old idea. In fact Douglas Engelbart used on during the mother of all demos (first: windows, mouse, internet, video conferencing etc.)
I wanted one since I saw one for the first time in a computer magazine (the Octima, about 1984), but they never caught on. Some are available, mostly for disabled people, and they are very expensive. According to people who have worked with them it just takes just a couple of days to become fast on these ones, but you cannot become as fast as a very fast typist.
I guess this is the main problem: for starters they seem to be harder, since they cannot see the letters, for pro-typists/programmers they do not offer enough gain, unless they have RSI. Maybe mobile typing will finally be their breakthrough. Took only 30 years.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
Who the heck will remember the order to hit and release keys? That's the sort of shit you take bagpipe lessons for!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
We've been using these for years:
m ber=12
http://www.infogrip.com/product_view.asp?RecordNu
Had a clerk who was unable to type with both hands bring in one of her own. She did just fine in a demanding, fast paced environment (ER Patient Registration).
For what it's worth, I could never get the hang of it. Would certainly take some time to learn. Perhaps as much time (if not more) than learning an alternate full sized KB layout.
I wonder if there's a Morse-to-text keyboard driver for my phone? A lot of time is wasted looking to see what three keys my fat thumb is pressing this particular time. If I could just hammer away messages on one key, without needing to watch what I was typing, that would seem to be quicker...
You are quite right. It's hard to type with fingers that must grip the keyboard at the same time. Stiff keys make it worse but the difficulty doesn't vanish even as the key force goes to zero. It's much better to use braces or straps of some sort to free the typing fingers from grip duty. That's why guitars, saxophones, etc. have neck straps, thumb hooks, etc.
And while I'm up here on my soapbox: it's just NOT that hard to learn to chord. Some people declare confidently that the learning curve is the barrier to widespread adoption of chording but it's not. Learning to chord, at least on my prototypes, was way easier than learning to touch type on a qwerty --- at which latter I never succeeded. You don't need such complex schemes as the blogger writes about.
The real barrier, IMHO, has been the lack of motivation. Why learn ANY efficient new way to type unless you are sufficiently rewarded? The reward is (or will be) mobility. Not just mobility for exchanging cryptic little text messages but mobility for the full range of desktop functionality.