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Ask Slashdot: A 'Mavis Beacon' For Teaching Smartphone and Tablet Typing?
theodp writes: "Where have you gone, Mavis Beacon? A nation of smartphone and tablet typists could use your help. You've seen people type fast-and-furiously on smartphones and tablets, so you know it can be done, but how exactly do these one- and two-fingered wonders (YouTube video) manage to do so? Is it their reaction time? Technique? Both? Back in the day, touch-typing teachers showed kids the secrets to higher word-per-minute scores on their Smith Coronas. Later, typing tutor software got kids up-to-speed on PCs. So, with over 1 billion smartphones and 200 million or so tablets shipped in 2013, what are the best software and tutorials that teach mobile typing techniques? And what platform specific features — iOS, Android, WP8/Win8, BB — do you find make your mobile typing life a whole lot easier?"
I have this horrible vision of a system where, as you advance from level to level, the touch-screen buttons keep getting smaller.
"Where have you gone, Mavis Beacon?"
Steam
http://store.steampowered.com/...
-- Jeff Woods
On a real keyboard, it's all about technique. Putting your fingers where they're supposed to go can speed you up quite a bit. I've known people who practiced a lot with two fingers on ICQ or MSN back in the day, and could probably get close to 30-40 WPM, but that still doesn't compare to someone using good technique. I'm not sure that's there's really any technique you can use on phone keyboards. They all pretty much suck. The best onscreen keyboard I've ever used was on my surface. The arrow keys help a lot when correcting mistakes. But there isn't enough room for such useful features on a small phone screen.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
try this
http://fleksy.com/
I think it's still free. no bullshit, I tried it for literally 10 minutes and was touch typing w/o looking at the keyboard.
I think it registers your taps in relative position to each other and has predictive correction/selection
This will probably be my third party keyboard of choice once iOS8 comes out.
...at least not on my goddamn telephone. I don't know how to "thumb type" at all, and oddly, when I'm sitting on the subway and I look around to see all the people furiously hammering away on their phones, I'm not one of them.
I use Swype (which is irritating in its own way, due to flaky prediction), and it's just usable enough that I can reply to an important email/text, or look something up on the net/maps. If it's not important, it waits until I'm sitting in front of a monitor - or better still, slips off the agenda entirely.
By all means, improve predictive text / speech recognition / HCI whatever. But why in the hell would I waste my time acquiring a skill that's only useful for burying one's head in (further) neurotic withdrawal from physical reality? It's like learning Esperanto so more people can read your Facebook page.
The issue is that the traditional keyboard layout. It's designed to accept up to 10 fingers of input. Your phone is only designed to accept two. This is reasonable only for the shittiest of typing skills. Most people who are fast at touch screen typing, get that way by learning to accept spelling mistakes, ignore grammar and punctuation, and let auto-correct generate something close to what you really intended. Their goals are completely different from traditional Mavis Beacon like software, because accuracy is practically irrelevant.
If you have a real desire to learn to type on a touch screen, toss out all of your QERTY keyboard bullshit and use something that was designed for - you know - touch screens (swype is an abomination that takes auto-correct down to the character level).
https://play.google.com/store/...