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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.'"
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.)