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Next Generation T9 Keyboard Technology
Iddo Genuth writes "Cliff Kushler, the inventor of the T9 keyboard technology for numeric keypads, has developed a new alphanumeric entry technology for touch-screen laptops and Smartphone devices. This latest technology, named Swype, works with an on-screen QWERTY keyboard similar to ones found on Windows Mobile and the iPhone. The difference from the usual method of typing in the letters is that a finger or stylus is used to slide in the first letter, then without lifting the finger, the user continues writing the entire word. Only once the word is completed can the finger be lifted off. According to the developers, this leads to a much faster way of 'typing,' or as we might call it soon, 'swiping.'"
"Swyper no swyping"!
first swipe
First, I never use that T9 stuff, because it never chooses the right word. Guessing the word that you want to type isn't convenient, it's annoying. Also, it doesn't allow for purposefully misspelled words and text slang.
Touchscreen keyboards to me have always been hard to use. On both the plasma-screen smartboards at my friend's A/V workplace and the ones I've seen in modern (i.e. well funded) high schools, the windows on screen keyboard and the keyboard prepackaged with the smartboard software is just terrible, partially due to the heat-sensitive surface being activated wherever my finger's heat first hits it, i.e. NOT where I wanted it to be.
This looks much more promising, and will hopefully be preventing the smartboard users from running back to a physical keyboard just to type something after using the mouse in front of the actual screen.
All these virtual keyboards are hard-coded for QWERTY, which makes even less sense for that kind of device than for a modern keyboard!
Dvorak should be an option, along with alphabetical order.
Actually for this thing, there's probably a whole new layout that's optimal. (That's an exercise for the reader to invent.)
I've had an iPhone application for quite a while that uses this. It's called WritingPad, and the about screen has a link to http://shapewriter.com/.
I'd like to see the accuracy of this system in a real-life setting. On phones with the T9 technology, I found it was faster for me to hit a key three times than to backspace every time the software made a mistake (which was frequently)...
Google's ad engine selected "WI Portable Restrooms -- We Offer Portable Restrooms in Every Configuration & Price Range" for this page.
OK, back to the drawing board on product name.
Already exists. I think it was out the first week the iPhone App Store was open. Works pretty decently.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I know I've already posted, but as of this post this article is tagged "fuckthegovernment".
/.? I know some of the FOSS people here are pretty diehard, but come on, wtf? What does the government have to do with T9 keyboards?
Really
Take a look at this demo of ShapeWriter from IBM. It's the same thing as Swype and was invented 5 years ago. Dr Zhai has formed a company around the tech and you can see it here: ShapeWriter.
he's likely a square guy & we don't need the hassles . who cares about the foibles of the process to date?
The difference from the usual method of typing in the letters is that a finger or stylus is used to slide in the first letter, then without lifting the finger, the user continues writing the entire word. Only once the word is completed can the finger be lifted off.
That's kind of like how a Ouija board is operated, isn't it? More proof that Cliff Kushler is Satan, I guess.
Rob
Patent patent patent! Someone will either be looking to make lots by licensing some "new idea".. or stifling such innovation by use of a patent. Or maybe I'm no longer excited by any invention that wasn't born out of the RFC process anymore..
swiping in the restroom...swiping in the restroom...teacher don't...
i've been using the writingpad iphone app for months that does just this.
http://www.shapewriter.com/iphone.html
Why, oh why, do I never have the mod points when something like is it posted. This needs to be modded up.
Is this anything like Dasher? The demo can be seen here
Like, everyone needs caps lock don't we? ffs!
Erm, you do know how to scroll through the list of suggested words on your phone
But if you try to type BASES (22737) and have to scroll through ACRES of irrelevant words, you're not likely to be someone who CARES about T9, and using that mode isn't likely to be in the CARDS for you. How many keystrokes does it take to scroll through this list?
How does it handle double letters?
For example, would it type my username as Goobermunch or Gobermunch? How would it know the difference? How does Swyping accommodate the William Wallaces of the world? Are they doomed to being Wiliam Walaces?
The press release leaves the question open. The ability to detect a repeated input seems to be an advantage of keypad type input. Perhaps, if you dwell for a sufficiently long period of time, it will count the character beneath the stylus twice.
--AC
What does the government have to do with T9 keyboards?
The government granted a monopoly on T9 input to Tegic (now part of Nuance).
I've just created the rotary version - with letters arranged by frequency (E in the center - others further out.) the E-writer or somesuch... or "Summoner" since it looks like you trace pentagrams on the circle. Different enough to get around the patent, I hope :)
meh
Only once the word is completed can the finger be lifted off.
Better not be dyslexic around devices of this kind, or it'll stick to your finger indefinitely.
It sure lends the term "StickyKeys" a new meaning!
-- Chaos, panic, pandemonium... My job here is done!
I was thinking about on-screen keyboards just yesterday. I usually avoid them, preferring real keyboards, but I was thinking, if your only choice is on screen, how would you want it to work?
My real keyboard is optimized to minimize hand and finger movement, by placing the keys I use most commonly near where my hands are supposed to be. However, it is limited by the medium: the keys have to be in the same place all the time. An on-screen keyboard doesn't have this limitation: you can put the "keys" wherever you want them to be at any time you like. Does anyone have experience with on-screen keyboards that do this (I know there are some)?
I was thinking that what you could do is have some kind of frequency table, and arrange symbols in order of frequency, taking into account the symbols that have already been typed. Then, symbols that are more likely to be the next symbol you want to enter would receive preferential treatment, in that they would be closer to the current position of the stylus and/or larger. This would speed up and reduce the effort for entering common combinations, at the expense of uncommon ones. It's sort of like Huffmann coding, and I think it might produce good results. On the other hand, I can imagine that symbols shifting around like that would be really, really annoying.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned SureType- the system the BlackBerry Pearl uses. The keyboard is laid out in QWERTY style, but there are two letters per key. This allows for fewer possible words than a T9 per key-press and also allows for faster typing because of the high likelihood of tapping on the same key consecutively or alternating between the same sets of two or three keys. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blackberrypearl.JPG for a look at the layout.
Wow... I did not even find the letters on that IBM demo. All what I saw was lines got drawed all over the places and words was got to text line.
That demomaker must have trained that layout a lot! But I was still faster with normal keyboard :-D (1 vs 10 fingers).
GNOME has better virtual-keyboard. You just type wanted letter and then you start moving mouse towards other letters. It needs and dictionary to know what words you are wanting to type and it predicts the needed letters bigger ones. So you can hit them more easily. You should find it from usability-menu.
This looks like the Shark typing method created for IBM a few years back.
I really liked the Shark idea when it first came out, so it's good to see something similar again. (Plus Shark worked on non-QWERTY 'boards as well, you just changed the settings on its initialisation)
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
The swypo.
I really like Quikwriting as it is so simple and obvious how to use
It is described amongst others here:
http://www.cs.uta.fi/~poika/g/node6.html
I've lived with RSI since 1993 - you get used to recognising things that do not help ergonomically. This looks like one of those things.
One of the major problems with RSI is that prolonged activation of muscle groups leads to fatigue. The term for this is static loading.
This is why click and release mouse behaviour (to activate menus, then click again to choose) is better for your health than the alternative method (click and hold, release to choose) because the alternative forces you to hold the mouse button down until you make your choice.
This keyboard idea is doing the same thing.
I suspect healthy people may like this keyboard and those suffering from RSI will dislike it greatly.
Info on RSI and remedial exercises: http://www.objmedia.demon.co.uk/rsi/rsi_srk.html
Stephen
As one of the many poor typists out there, I don't see why we still have to choose between looking at the keyboard and learning to touch type. A touch keyboard, detecting my finger positions, could coordinate with a translucent virtual kbd on screen that also displayed my finger positions. The virtual kbd would be made to appear and disappear with appropriate gestures. Addional feedback would include haptic, sound, & 'hover' keys. And, as the whole thing is virtual, it would reconfigure on the fly to cope with any language, which simplifies life for the PC manufacturer. The touch keyboard would still need some kind of display but it could be pretty basic. Oh dear - I hope I haven't described this in too much detail. I wouldn't want some poor patent troll to starve...
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
I don't know what that's called either, but it's been more than great. Each key can be pressed to the left or to the right, resulting in a different letter. What it gives me is a small, full keyboard, no need for T9, and no need for tiny tiny keys like a blackberry or a Palm. I love it :)
"From here you can get an excellent view of my foot." ~ Pai Mei.
As others have already said, using sliding motion(s) for touch based typing is nothing new. One of the methods I haven't seen mentioned in the comments yet is the QUONG layout, or HexInput (has nothing to do with hexadecimal). The thing about HexInput is the hexagon shaped softkeys arranged in a honeycomb pattern, wich gives surrounded keys 6 easily available neighbours for sliding onto.
I tried it once on my DS, using BLARGH Text Editor. After a few practice rounds, I could touch type a lot faster than with traditional tapping based touch typing.
However, as my main language is not English, I would need a custom layout for it to be effective for me in everyday situations.
That would be already made, and called Dasher. See an earlier post for a Youtube video, or try it out at their site. Works reasonably well, almost like magic. But then, so does ShapeWriter.
I had a similar idea, character's aranged in rings growing from the center.
! @ # $ % ^ & *
( l f k p r z )
- b g a o v =
[ c h e * u w ]
; d n i y x '
\ , . ? ! /
Where A, E, I, O, and U form the center most ring. Inside that ring is a double, shift, space, and backspace buttons. Consinants would have to be arranged meaningfully (I just tossed them up alphabetically and swapped the vowels)
I'm highly tempted to try writting such a tool in silverlight now...
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I have an LG phone and I hate the T9 implementation that it uses. It's more effective for me to punch ~30% more keys than to deal with the mostly inaccurate recommendations. T9 only makes typing more efficient when you can accurately predict what it's going to recommend, and it actually recommends appropriate words.
Why is it that every time I open a fresh installation of OpenOffice.org Writer I have to find and disable automatic word completion. Maybe it's just me, but on a full-sized keyboard this feature does far more harm than good for users who already type efficiently. For example, if I'm typing a ten-letter word it's much faster and easier for me to just type the ten letters than it is to wait for the software to make a recommendation, hope that it's the right one, acknowledge the word as correct and accept it, and then return to my train of thought.
It sounds ok for every day English use, but what about other languages?
And what if a word is not found? how is the word then typed?
Dvorak work?
That fucking shit pops up on my cell when i enter contact notes, and it has preferential placement at position 1 whereas ABC is position 2. The boneheads pushing or "pimplementing" t9 have earned title of the most hated assholes in my book of tech gripes. My blood pressure goes off the scale when i find myself blindly typing in t9 by touch only to look down and find bullshit gibberish that has NO bearing to what i am thinking or typing. Typos i can live with if i hit sent, but finding umpteen unrelated, garbled, jacked up shit on my screen makes me want to choke people at sprint and anywhere else t9 oozes from. I hope there is a way to eviscerate it from my device/s in future deployments. t9 never learns nor even comes CLOSE to what i am typing. If it learned, it would take note of what i replaced its loony suggestion with. Well, actually, it wont' -- since i escape from t9 before my gasket gets too close to popping.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
does anyone remember the onscreen keyboard for palm os that broak everything down into nine buttons? to hit a letter there were two different ways: you hit one of the nine squares you moved in a direction to fill in the other nineteen letters it was much faster than graffiti, and i was able to use it reasonably close to my typing speed (using the software's speed check) with my foldout keyboard.
ShapeWriter is the commercialization of IBM's SHARK project, which pioneered the concept. ShapeWriter runs on iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and Windows PC. Downloads Here.
the T9 system in ipod touchs work REMARKABLY well... it's one of those technologies that i just completely misjudged before i tried it.
when i heard about "predictive typing" i was imagining some irritating word completion dealie like with the address bar in browsers.
but it doesn't autocomplete... it just compares what you typed (usually filled with typos) and then does a dictionary search of likely words considering keys in proximity of the keys that were actually typed.
brilliant. and as i said, works much better than i thought it could.
and swype seems to be based on the same technology... just taking into account all the letters you "ran over" and running a dictionary check against possible words.
but there is a version of a swype like system already available in the app store for free but it's not very useful for iphones or touchs... the keyboard is too small and your finger ends up blocking too much of the keyboard... swype seems more suited to stylus based devices like palm... but the notion of the stylus itself seems to be going away for good reason. i'd prefer finger based multi touch operation over a stylus any day.
so swype might be a tech that missed its time.
although... it would work well for larger screens with larger keyboards but that would limit the implementation to something like tablet pcs....
jin