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Pen vs. Keyboard vs. Touch vs. Everything Else
benz001 writes "In the run-up to everyone's favourite tablet, Phil Gyford goes back through his gadget collection and compares text entry speeds to see which one comes out on top. It's not what you'd call a rich data set, and of course the Qwerty keyboard comes up trumps, but the iPhone virtual keyboard came in a surprisingly close second, just edging out the Treo — and all the keyboard solutions regardless of how small and fiddly beat real pen and paper. This probably matches most people's experience (when was the last time you had to handwrite more than a bullet point in a meeting?) and gels pretty well with Macworld's predictions but I'm still hoping for sub-vocal voice recognition. (Jump straight to the final results here)."
The chart looks to me as if Mr. Gyford is typing relatively slow on a full-sized keyboard, compared to the iPhone. Last I remembered, I could not use more than two fingers at once on that tiny screen. I'd be interested in how long it takes the average slashdotter to type his example text.
... would have compared more than those few mainstream input methods. Particularly interesting: Dvorak keyboards and Tikinotes, Swype and MessageEase for the iPhone.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I went to jury duty the other day, and the steno reporter... wasn't really using a steno machine. She was annotating the taping by speaking the non-verbal events into a little mouth-shield thingie.
So verbal dictation is possible- you'll just like more of a geek.
stored on computers from birth to the grave
It's not what you'd call a rich data set, and of course the Qwerty keyboard comes up trumps
I of course have to mention the Dvorak layout. I encourage you to try it. Your hands might thank you (and fall in love), and if not you can always go back rather easily. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard
Also, for some experimental geekery, trying to find out whether it's all the shit it's made out to be, see http://klausler.com/evolved.html
That's it. Thank you for listening. My hands thank me for listening way back when, too ;)
of course the Qwerty keyboard comes up trumps
Not to nitpick, but what the hell are "trumps"? AFAIK, there is no plural form of "trump". The idiom I believe you were looking for was "...comes up aces" - which even in context seems like a stretch to find a phrase synonymous with "is the winner" or "comes out on top"
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
I used to be lightning fast with the original graffiti, very close to my speed on the iPhone. But Palm went and changed it (I know legal reasons etc) and it got slow and sucky. The best part of graffiti was that you could take notes without looking at the device. I would think the original graffiti would be much faster than it is on that table, or they got a newbie to do the graffiti writing.
The iPhone keyboard works amazingly well. I saw the preview demo of the phone in 2007and I thought that soft keyboard was full of fail (30+ touch points in the size of two postage stamps-c'mon), but there's enough heuristics behind it that it actually works really well. I'm way faster on the iPhone keyboard than I am on a crackberry keyboard.
Sheldon
A touchpad is probably the dumbest design you can think of, for anything except the most coarse-grained "point and shoot". Imagine trying to use photoshop on a touch screen. All the areas you want to select are automatically obscured by the very finger(s) that are doing the selecting. How stoooopid is that? Obviously the people who thought it was a good idea either took us all for fools, or reckoned we'd evolve transparent fingers in a year or two.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
A comment on one of the input methods the MacWorld article touched on: an on-screen virtual keyboard. Unless you have some tactile response, an on-screen virtual keyboard almost requires you to look at it to see what you are typing. However - and this is a point that the article author may not have fully grasped - being that it is a tablet and not a laptop, you're already going to be looking at the keyboard, because you are looking at the screen, because that's the usually the place you're looking at on a tablet computer.
This doesn't meant that I relish the notion of doing much writing on any tablet computer with a virtual keyboard. But, it isn't as bad as, say, a laptop with a touchscreen top and bottom.
This depends on the strings: you can handwrite many mathematical expressions more quickly than you can type them in most setups. This is especially true for things with a lot of super/sub scripts. It's *especially* true for symbols not in the character sets available to you.
Also, sometimes the same *content* can be recorded more quickly as handwritten math/logic than as typed strings.
Sometimes handwriting is faster, sometimes typing is faster.
Therefore, the fastest setup is one where you can switch between handwriting and typing seamlessly, such as on a tablet PC on some sort of stand situated like an easel with an external keyboard at elbow height, or at a desktop with a keyboard and graphics tabletin which case, for the monitor position, you don't have to compromise between what's good for your hands/arms and what's good for your eyes/neck/back.
A while ago, I saw a keyboard that was more projector/sensor than physical keyboard. The projector would idsplay a keyboard on a flat(hopefully) surface, and then you would type by pressing the "keys" (key displayed on flat surface). So, instead of having to carry around a full keyboard, you would just need the projector/sensor. I would probably go with this as the "I need something to be able to type my novel on" type of device, but also have the touch screen to use for less demanding typing jobs, such as an occasional URL. I know, it's probably patented by someone else, which would be an obstactle for Apple to work out, but the aim here is to have something that can be effective, while not needing a .
There are morse input devices for disabled people. A competent operator could probably do quite well, especially with an iambic input device (two buttons or paddles).
This may be of interest: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=8542413 funny hats not needed!
If you're really concerned with typing efficiency on an iPhone, look into BTstack which is a homebrew Bluetooth stack available to jailbroken users. BTstack is just the stack itself, though other applications have added support for it in other ways, the most relevant here being "BTstack keyboard" which is available for $5 from the Cydia store. Connect any Bluetooth keyboard and you're good to go. Oh, and it works in any app on the phone, not just a single app that you'd have to copy and paste text out of.
Now granted, the mental image of arriving to a meeting with *just* a keyboard and your phone is rather amusing, but the point is that it's possible. This stack is also used in another program that connects Bluetooth mice (using a mouse cursor library), and various game emulators have begun adding support for Bluetooth connetivity with the Wii remote.
Personally I find that the standard iPhone keyboard is actually fairly efficient once you get the hang of it, though part of it is the copious amount of autocorrect that the system applies. If I had to manually correct every error I made, I would be cursing the lack of physical buttons to the end of time.
One of the more subjective articles I've read in a while...Speed of typing will be directly proportional to the length of time you have spent using the particular gadget.
I'm a firm believer that all tablets and smart phones need some kind of a pullout keyboard. Would it really be that hard to incorporate a pull-out keyboard with the most basic keys (numbers, letters, shift, space...)? It could even have smaller keys than a real keyboard and be practical. I don't want to be cornered into using a touch screen or stylus for extensive note taking and such.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
For me, text entry isn't that important a feature for a tablet; the mobile nature of the device makes it an unlikely choice of platform to generate documents of any length or complexity. Rather, the benefit of a tablet is the ability to consume or peruse data wherever I want.
To that end, I'm more interested in tools for tagging, noting up and generally scribbling on content generated elsewhere. Right now, I'll print drafts of documents just so I can have the freedom of leaning back in my chair or getting up and walking around while I review them, or putting them next to whatever (hard copy) source material I was using to create them to do side-by-side comparisons. Out of desktops, laptops and netbooks, no device lets me do that, and the screens on PDAs and smartphones are too small.
A screen that can take both stylus and touch input would likely fit the bill, with a virtual keyboard on the rare occasions I'd need it. We already have devices that handle extensive text entry in the conditions where that activity is best done.
I have a Palm Treo 755p which has a full QWERTY keypad on it. The buttons are tiny but they are shaped just right for quick entry. My friends with iPhones agree that the real keypad on my phone is certainly quicker than typing on their touch screens. With a bit more practice, I bet the author would agree.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I've had the "pleasure" of using this for about a year now. It's a terrible interface.
It takes an appreciable amount of time for each keypress to be acknowledged by the system.
And if you try to type quickly, without waiting for the device to catch up, you'll very soon be touch typing and hoping like hell you haven't made a mistake or run out the memory buffer.
And god help you if haven't disabled to the autocorrect feature, which has suggested some truly astonishing word replacements in the last 12 months.
The tests were done using a 221 word long paragraph in English. How fast would any of these methods be at entering something like the Schrödinger Equation? Sure, you could type "i\hbar\frac{\partial\psi}{\partial t} = \frac{\hbar^2}{2m}\nabla^2\psi + V(\mathbf{r})\psi" on a keyboard just about as easily as "I have enough faith in my fellow creatures in Great Britain", but realizing that you've made a mistake and fixing it would be difficult.
Some things are easier with a keyboard and some things that are just easier to do with a pen and paper, be they real or virtual.
Yes, I know it's a dying art, but he put speeds up for the Palm Graffiti didn't he?!
I'm currently learning Teeline shorthand which I'm told gets speeds of around 120 words per minutes if you know what you're doing. Pitman on the other hand can reach a paper burning 300 words per minute, although you trade your sanity in for learning that.
Would completely change the results and put pen and paper up top.
the iPhone virtual keyboard came in a surprisingly close second... This probably matches most people's experience
Not at all. There is no way the iPhone keyboard can possibly be as fast to use as a physical qwerty keypad. I can only imagine that there's something sub-optimal about the Treo keyboard (having never tried it myself). Alternatively, perhaps the author hasn't used his Treo for a while, whereas he's well-practised on the iPhone at the moment.
Don't get me wrong, I think virtual keyboards on touch screens are a wonderful innovation, and I personally would never buy a device with a physical keyboard, due to the extra bulk and weight it engenders in the device. At the end of the day, I read stuff on my phone a lot more often than I enter data, so I want the device optimised for viewing and portability rather than speed of text entry.
But that doesn't change the fact that a tactile keyboard is quicker than a virtual one. Perhaps the "swipe" style virtual keyboards that are now appearing will turn this around.
Sometimes I wonder how much we have forgotten. The advantage of a good computer keyboard is that a secretary, and even a programmer, should be able to touch type. They can type a long passage of text, without looking at the keys. If you can do this, your typing speed is way faster than someone that has to look at notes, and then look back at the keyboard.
Further, the advantage of handwriting was that you could write far faster than you could type. That was the whole point of script and shorthand. With shorthand, you can write as fast as someone speaks, and people can speak very fast. Today, no one teaches shorthand, and many schools omit cursive script.
In a few more years, someone will patent writing with a pen on a tablet with special symbols that makes handwriting faster. Only, it won't be called shorthand ...
I'm sorry, but is the submitter fscking insane? I rely heavily on handwritten notes all the time. So does every college student and scientist that I know. Note that I'm talking about extremely tech-savvy people here, who often DO own an iPhone... but they are fundamentally useless for taking notes.
Taking notes, of course, is not the only writing one does, but it's a pretty important thing. Writing serves a a communication medium to others, but equally serves as expansion of short- and long-term memory for ourselves. I have yet to meet any GUI interface that has the flexibility of a pad of paper:
- Effortless data entry.
- Figures, mathematics or other non-ASCII input are faster than any other technique (and likely to remain so)
- No learning curve (for people past 6th grade)
- Bookmarking, fast page finding.
- No limit to page-space viewable at one time
-Needs no recharging, syncing
- Not a target for theft
- Light and comfortable in the hand
- Cheap, reliable components
- Easily backed up by photocopier or scanner
The only downside, for me, is it's a little slow for pure-text entry, and it's sometimes hard to read by own sloppy writing. But that's just user skill, not the fault of the technology.
I'm surprised that Palm Graffiti came in last place, especially by that big of a margin. I used a Palm Pilot extensively for several years, and I could "write" on my Palm Pilot much faster than I could write on pen and paper.
It took a few weeks to get used to it, but after you learned Graffiti well enough, you could actually "write" pretty fast with it. The test behind TFA apparently used a novice to test Palm's Graffiti. A Palm Pilot veteran would have been able to write in Graffiti at speeds nearer to actual writing, and maybe faster.
I have a bad feeling about this...
I would like to point out HTC's Touch Pro 2 and Sony Ericsson's XPERIA X1, as two examples of one of the kinds of phone keyboards he has missed, the larger physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard. They are much easier to use than the Treo's tiny, fiddly keys, as the keyboard spans the entire width of the longer side of the phone as opposed to the shorter side. I would expect that many people would be quicker with the iPhone than with the Treo after equal practise at both, but then you try a larger physical keyboard like the ones offered by either of the two devices I just mentioned (or countless other devices).
Seems like a natural fit would be to use the iPhone as the keyboard for the new Tablet. Need a keyboard? There's an app for that. When you go with the iPhone as a keyboard option, you have to buy the anti-gravity/levitating option on the Tablet.
I think a more accurate description would have been "the tablet that as far as 90% of the population is concerned is only a rumor of something will end up being more expensive than I can afford anyways, so they really haven't bothered to care."
Why are people so stuck on this?
"In the run-up to everyone's favourite tablet?"
What are you talking about? We don't know if apple has a tablet. If they do, we don't know if it's going to be any good.
Yes, apple made the ipod and OSX is a pretty decent OS built off of unix. But this same company made the apple newton and quicktime.
Steve Jobs is not some magical creature whose every creation is pure gold. After the ipod they've made a hojillion varieties of the same damn item until they released a multitouch interface and suddenly they are gods gift to hardware.
If I hear one more thing about apples Second-Coming-of-God-Damned-Jesus tablet my brain is going to explode in unfettered rage.
He wrote at 65 words per minute on the QWERTY keyboard. IMHO that is quite slow, someone who known touch would easily beat the iPhone.
You mean this handy little device on sister site ThinkGeek?
Indeed. I have the 5800, which has a virtual keyboard so would also come out second place. But as well as the option for touch, it also comes with a stylus, which I find even quicker (plus you can use the mini virtual keyboard, which lets you still see most of the rest of the screen). It's a shame he didn't do that - but sadly it seems he, like most the media, only cares about comparing the almighty Iphone.
Finger touch is useful, but I find it odd that the stylus has seemingly gone so out of fashion. And regarding capacitive touch screens, I agree - the 5800 doesn't do multitouch, but I'd prefer the accuracy over complex gestures I'm not likely to use ("one mouse button is simpler", remember Apple fans?)
Really? He expected the QWERY to be more than 50% faster than the iPhone. Data (in seconds) 296/194 = 1.526 or 52.6% faster. It would have been nice if he use someone proficient with an iPhone, and have them type. We all know how fast people can type, but the iPhoe hasn't been around long enough to get decent data points. Or have a iPhone QWERTY challenge.
It depends on language too. Japanese input on most phones and on the iPhone is predictive, so it suggests the next word or particle based on grammatical rules and your own typing history.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
So what about a Blackberry, in particular the Bold 9000 keyboard? I don't see how anyone could be faster on a virtual iphone keyboard than the beautifully clicky tilty buttoned bold
Seriously, you think someone could reach touch-typing speeds on an iPhone, with enough practice? Or do you think people will evolve little tiny hands after enough generations are exposed to this timeless digital niche...?
Do you understand that a fast touch-typist is using all of his fingers at once, positioned over different keys that are about to strike? As far as I can tell from the iPhone or other small virtual keyboards, there is a lack of space to position fingers over adjacent keys, as well as a lack of tactile feedback to allow touch-typing, i.e. where you do not need to visually orient your hands nor even worse visually aim each finger strike.
I really want to know how much this changes on a per person basis...
At work, I use a tablet PC exclusively. Now, I'm able to dock the (once pretty nice, but now piece of shit, thanks to dating hardware and loads of paranoid IT apps monitoring every single thing we do) thing, but the majority of my input on it is handwriting. Now, the fact that I get to use a point and click interface for it does alter it. However, I have to catch a lot of information in one paragraph, and the goal is to complete that and all of the extra pointing and clicking (often including handwriting as the point and click doesn't have everything, and I'm forced to use an "Other" entry box) within a very short time. This can be as long as 5-10 minutes, but is usually under that. This also includes correcting the handwriting recognition's text, which I have to do a hell of a lot, as I'm doing this in a medical setting, using a lot of medical terminology, without a medical dictionary installed to the handwriting recognition (it exists, but getting IT to replace batteries and styli that are long overdue for replacement is a pain in the ass enough money-wise).
What I'm getting at: my handwriting in these circumstances has gotten ridiculously fast--and I don't use any kind of shorthand or even abbreviations. To the point that, if I didn't type over 100 wpm, it would probably be faster for me to handwrite than type in QWERTY. It certainly destroys my typing speed on my Droid, which I've gotten pretty damn good at (specifically the on screen keyboard, because I got well faster at that than I am at the hardware keyboard). So, really, this is interesting, but I really think it's going to vary by just who you test it on. I could see the majority matching these results, but I think it would be stupid to say it's a catch-all...
Buy an iphone
"It's not what you'd call a rich data set"
Too right it isn't. I have nearly as large a range of input devices on my desk* as he bothered to blog about.
For a real test, it would be interesting to see how a court stenography machine or "real" shorthand compares:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8356000/8356176.stm
or even an AgendA or original Microwriter:
http://www.bellaire.demon.co.uk/bellaire_microwriter_agenda.html
* no, I'm not a very tidy person.
Ability to read it later.
My Journal
Agg
Seriously? Keep your notes in a book or some other time-ordered form. Pretty fast to flip through, find things before and after the stuff in question. Basic indexing (putting a two-letter abbreviation at the top of each page by topic) makes it even easier.
The human eye is remarkably good at picking out visual subject material. If I've read a pure-text book, I can usually flip to a section I remember faster than using the index. Pure computer-based searches are useful mainly in contexts where you _haven't_ read the source material before, but that's not the application we're discussing here.
that's in english, anyway. for those typing mostly in latin languages like myself (brazilian portuguese), ipod, grafitti and newton suck. the treo is actually good (the shift key works wonders), nokia keyboards have nice results as well and a qwerty obliterates any of them (by a 2,5:1 ratio at least).
Yes, shorthand is very useful. I can write shorthand about as quickly as I can type. The advantage of shorthand over typing is that you can do it with low-tech implements (pen and paper). The disadvantage is that, for me at least, it's harder to read. Shorthand speeds up the writing (input) speed at the expense of slowing down the reading (output) speed, where input and output are from the point of view of the piece of paper as a storage medium.
So if someone is speaking and I only have my Treo (which has that tiny keyboard for thumbs), I won't be able to keep up on the Treo, so I write shorthand instead. However, afterward I have to spend time transcribing it.
It took me about a week to learn enough to start using. I started replacing some words in my handwritten notes with shorthand notation, and kept adding more shorthand words to my vocabulary. After a month I was at about 50% shorthand mixed with 50% conventional words, and at 2 months I was basically doing all shorthand. I used Gregg shorthand rather than Pitman because you don't need to write on lined paper and you don't need to tell between thicker and thinner pen strokes (which you can easily do with a pen but not with a pencil).
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I also really liked Grafitti, and could never get Jot to work nearly as well. It was one of the things that really pushed me off Palm devices earlier rather than later, even though I loved my Palm V...
As you said, the iPhone keyboard works really well - and as the article author said, I prefer to use it in portrait too. Even though in theory the keys are smaller it's easier to type with both thumbs quickly for some reason.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm curious why you chose Teeline. Was it just an opportunity that occurred, or did you find it better than Gregg? My mom learned Pitman and my dad learned Gregg, so I chose Gregg (didn't need different thickness strokes, didn't need to write on lined paper); I wasn't aware of other types of shorthand.
But looking at the Wikipedia entry on Teeline, it still looks like Gregg is better: the strokes are more fluidic in Gregg, and seem more intuitive. For example, "v" is just a big "f" in Gregg, and "b" is a big "p". (The bigger strokes are 3 times the size of the smaller strokes, so there's no confusion.)
I guess one more difference is that Gregg is phonetic ("fonet'k" is how you'd write that in Gregg) just like most shorthand systems, whereas Teeline is alphabetical. That means I can use Gregg for other language systems as well (you couldn't use Teeline for Chinese, for example).
Gregg can reach up to 280wpm. You said Pitman can hit 300wpm, but I don't see how it could possibly be faster than Gregg if Pitman requires different stroke thicknesses (ie. pressing harder or lighter on the paper makes a difference). It's probably just a matter of mastery --Pitman has been around longer and probably has a bigger dictionary of abbreviations.
Not too late to switch, you know! Judging from the stroke shapes, Gregg and Teeline are much different, and you'd probably won't confuse the two. You could mix the two as you transition from Teeline to Teeline/Gregg, or English/Teeline to English/Teeline/Gregg and then English/Gregg and then pure Gregg.
Also remember that, if you're the only one reading your own shorthand, you don't have to stick with the standard shorthand system. I modified my Gregg so that, for example, I could use more stroke combinations for prefixes and suffixes. E.g. Gregg uses a final "sh" for the "-tion" suffix, as in "vision" -> "v-sh", but I changed it to "sh-n" so I could use "sh" with other combinations. Any Gregg teacher would probably slap me.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I have used Blackberry keyboards, and a variety of small pager keyboards in the past. The iPhone keyboard IS faster. There are a few reasons:
1) Really good predictive input corrects small mistakes.
2) Larger hit area. This may seem counter-intuitive, but because the entire keyboard area is touched you actually have much larger "keys" to hit than on a physical mobile keyboard, which usually has very small keys.
3) No physical key travel. On a virtual keyboard a letter is recognized as soon as you press, requiring no physical travel to complete a press.
4) Multitouch. In conjunction with the previous factor, recognition of multiple presses means the system can be prepared to accept another key even before your finger leaves the previous key.
If you claim a physical keyboard is so much faster and he was just slow, by all means type in the sample text he posted and post your time for an accurate result with a keypad you know well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Remember that he OWED a Treo for years, and even stated he loved the keyboard.
My own experience bears out what he is saying - I have used tiny keyboards before and text entry on the iPhone is somewhat faster, or at least around the same. You just need to spend some time typing and after a while you'll be amazed how quick it can be when using two thumbs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm surprised that Palm Graffiti came in last place
Graffiti was not used. The vastly inferior Jot was used, because that's what Palm was forced to switch to at some point (patent issue I think). I can easily believe Jot fell where it did in the test.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Agree. Palm Graffiti has a major advantage that is often overlooked: you do not need to be looking at your input. Since all the letters are written one on top of the other, you don't need to shift your hand to the next letter position, or see when you have to start a new line, etc.
When I was talking to a person and taking notes, I'd have my eyes on the other person all the time while I stroked and poked my Palm. Inevitably, after a while the person would say, "Are you taking down all of this without looking at the screen?" If in a meeting taking notes, sometimes I'd have my Palm in my left hand, under the table, entering with my left thumb, and my right hand would be free. (That was slower, though.)
It's a different story for the new Graffiti 2 that's on the new Palms, including my Palm Treo (yes it has a keypad, but I installed "Graffiti Anywhere" to access the Graffiti 2 "shortcut" symbol so I can put "shortcut-D-T-S" for the date/time stamp). The Graffiti 2 strokes are supposedly more "intuitive" (see "user friendly" in the Microsoft dictionary, or "dumbed down" in an ordinary dictionary), but some of them use two strokes. Even worse, it doesn't know which letter you want to enter until you have entered the second stroke! I'm talking about the letter T (downstroke, then a separate horizontal stroke) and the letter i (downstroke, then a dot on top) and the letter L (downstroke, then nothing else). So if I want to enter the letter T, I put a downstroke, and then a letter L appears. Then I put a horizontal stroke, and the letter L is deleted (backspace) followed by the letter T.
However, the shortcut macro system aborts if you enter a non-existent shortcut. No shortcut begins with "shortcut-D-L". So if I want to enter "shortcut-D-T-S", I enter "shortcut-D" and then begin entering the letter T with a downstroke. The letter L appears, the system aborts since I had just entered the non-existent "shortcut-D-L" macro, and even when I do the horizontal stroke and the letter L is replaced by T, it's too late. This was the system on the Tungsten Turd that I bought and then quickly resold (forget the exact Tungsten model, but it had the sliding bottom that covered the Graffiti area --who thought this was a good idea again?). My current Graffiti Anywhere on mt Treo 650 doesn't have that problem, thank goodness. But I wish they could go back to the original Graffiti system again. One stroke per letter, non-intuitive except for geeks --but who cares? Everyone else will use the keyboard.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
You can swap out the recognition libraries on your phone. I had Graf1 on my Treo650 and Centro after years of having a Palm IIIx and Visor.
Here's a link I googled up real quick:
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=5830
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
I have a basic phone with a slide out 12-key numeric keypad, you insensitive clod!
I'd like the author to benchmark 1-digit typing (i.e. thumb). Are the speeds for texting *that* much faster with a fancy shmancy onscreen keyboard?
Yeah, and it tends to predict all sorts of things I didn't want to write.
Seems to work fine for the jr. high school kids, however.
I've noticed that many of my Japanese friends do not consider the keyboard at all convenient, by the way.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The point is that some of us find we didn't want to type what the input method predicts.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
ergo, source code
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
In the run-up to everyone's favourite tablet,
It does not even exist yet. It will be just a tablet. And about 3% of the population will actually care.
Way to spin up the reality distortion bubble.
I hate fanbois! (They are essentially, free marketing. [And often, some of them are actually working for marketing.])
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
it would be great if Apple could invent a device for this, maybe a pen-input type device where you can use your own handwriting, maybe with various pieces of paper put together for an almost endless screen, you could just flip the page when you ran out of room on once piece of paper, even tear pieces out when you wanted to move the information around. It would be cool if they invented a form of e-ink that leaks from the pen input device itself directly onto the page so there is no annoying flashing as the pixels are moved around. There's got to be a way to do this which won't use too much battery power and won't be too heavy... Someone should suggest this to Steve Jobs