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Handhelds Hardware

Palm 'Molecular' Keyboard 164

Posted by michael from the 50-taps-per-minute dept.
Frank writes: "Here's an interesting new Palm application I found over at PalmGear.com. It's a new technology from IBM research called ATOMIK, it potentially allows typing of faster than 40 words per minute by using a Metropolis optimization algorithm in which the special keyboard is treated as a "molecule" and each key as an "atom"."
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Palm 'Molecular' Keyboard More

Palm 'Molecular' Keyboard

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  • umm (Score:1)

    by core10k ( 196263 )
    It's called a fucking chord keyboard.

  • Interesting (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    But can it be subject to keystroke logging [slashdot.org]?

  • Free Sticker (Score:2, Funny)

    by bitserve ( 451117 )
    Make sure and order your free sticker for the keypad layout. It'll be a neat car/cubicle decoration anyway.

    -mark
  • "a Metropolis optimization algorithm"?
    sounds like something from superman :)

    can i remap my pc keyboard to do this? (maybe i should get a blank keyboard fisrt). Its about time we started using a keyboard thats designed to _help_ us find the keys instead of slowing us down... (ie QWERTY)
    • Similar to simulated annealing if I recall correctly.
      • Metropolis and simulated annealing are mostly the same, I think. It basically works like this:

        1) Start off with a proposed solution (I suppose the "molecule").

        2) Evaluate its fitness, let's call that F. The fitness of the keypad was probably the weighted sum of stylus transition times from letter to letter. Lower fitness would be better (I know it doesn't sound right, but it's used by a lot of Evo-algorithm researchers).

        3) Randomly mutate the "molecule" to something similar to the original. Here, the researchers probably randomly swapped key positions, or "atoms".

        4) Evaluate the fitness of the new "molecule".

        5) Calculate the change in fitness, let's call that dF.

        6) If dF < 0, then use the new "molecule", and go back to step 2.

        7) Calculate the value of p=e^(-dF/T), where T is a constant. This value p is the probability you will switch to the new "molecule".

        8) Go back to step 2.

        I think the difference between Metropolis and simulated annealing is that T, the temperature of the system, goes down with time in simulated annealing.

        Anyhow, the reason I quoted the words "molecule" and "atom" is because they are only loosely related to the algorithm. And to call this thing a "molecular" keyboard is misleading (well, except for the fact that most matter here on earth is molecular). I could go ahead and replace the words "molecule" with "tinkertoy" and "atom" with "rods and wheels" and I'll sell you a tinkertoy keyboard. It could go well with that tinkertoy computer they built at MIT...
    • QWERTY's fine. check out this site [earthlink.net] for the history of qwerty and why it was invented.
      • Actually, the article seems to point out that QWERTY is inefficient in a computer and was only developed so that the most common letter pairs were far apart to not hit each other. It says the "Dvorak" keyboard is much more efficient but QWERTY remains a standard.
        • Which article were you reading? Look at the last two paragraphs:

          "The Dvorak keyboard sounds very good. However, a keyboard need to do more than just "sound" good, and unfortunately, Dvorak has failed to prove itself superior to QWERTY... It's not surprising, then, that Dvorak has failed to take hold. No one wants to take the time and trouble to learn a new keyboard, especially if it isn't convincingly superior to the old."
      • i never said it was the most efficient, but it became a standard. anyways, it has become the most efficient because that's what we all know how to use. If we switched to dvorak, then the efficiency would be greatly reduced as everyone had to buy new keyboards and had to learn a whole new system. everyone would be making errors left and right and taking twice as long to type. QWERTY has become our standard and cannot be changed without serious consequences.
    • can i remap my pc keyboard to do this?


      There wouldn't be any benefit. This keyboard is designed for use of a single stylus. The goal is to minimize average distance between successive keystrokes. There are no "home keys" (where your fingers rest on a regular keyboard). On a regular keyboard, you have many fingers (if you know how to type :-). The goal is to minimize average distance to the home keys, and to try to put successive keystrokes on opposite hands for faster typing.


      I tried this new system and it seems to work. Not having the patience to wait for the sticker, I downloaded the , used xv to crop it and print it out in Postscript with the main area at 164pt by 60pt. That seems to work OK. [ibm.com]

      • OK, go HERE [ibm.com] and look for the icon that says "pathsticker.jpg" (third from the left).


        This new /. just sucks. I don't dare preview stuff because it just loses it before I can submit.

  • What about Fitaly? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Radnor ( 4434 ) on Saturday August 25, 2001 @03:04PM (#2216527)
    Back when I had my Palm PDA I used FitalyStamp [fitaly.com] as my input method (a version is also available for the PocketPC). It's significantly faster than graffiti, and according to a contest [fitaly.com] held last year the fastest "tapist" could tap out words at 81.74 wpm! Sound crazy? You can see for yourself [fitaly.com] how fast they tap.
  • this technology has been aroud for quite some time. Fitaly [twsolutions.com] uses it and some others
    ok, maybe the algorithm is new but it's almost the same. In any case I'm from .cz so this sh*t won't save me anyway.
  • "Alphabetically-tuned layout: Generally, letters from A to Z run from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the keyboard. This layout helps novice users find letters that are not yet memorized."
    Although it may allow for new users this would basically land me back at sqare one with wpm. I would probably average only a few wpm plus a bucketful of typos switching from standard qwerty layout.
    • considering that you'd be typing with a stylus instead of 10 fingers, you're at square one regardless of layout. I bet its worth learning though, for people who have to put a lot of data into their palm devices by hand.

    • Re:New layout not so good (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SEGV ( 1677 )
      As Donald A. Norman states in his classic book "The Psychology/Design of Everyday Things":

      ...every year some company foists another stupid alphabetical keyboard upon us...

      (paraphrased)
  • No curly braces / squiggly brackets / accolades

  • Quikwriting? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25, 2001 @03:10PM (#2216549)
    I'm using quikwriting right now and its pretty good. I especially like the way the overlay works, you just print it out on a transparency and slide it in, which is much better than a sticker imo.

    Its probably slower than Fitaly and this keyboard but it does a pretty good job.

    http://mrl.nyu.edu/projects/quikwriting/
  • Until I can plug my PDA into my brainpan, I'll stick with transcriber on the ipaq and the targus stowaway keyboard [the-gadgeteer.com] for heavy text entry..

  • It will be interesting to see how this plays out. QWERTY keyboards have dominated for over a century, despite the proven inefficiencies of the layout, and despite the introduction of several allegedly superior products (I've never tried a Dvorak keyboard or anything else non-QWERTY, so I can't say).

    In any case, I think that as people who tend to investigate things on the forefront of technology, Slashdot readers with Palms/Visors should consider checking this out...
    • despite the proven inefficiencies of the layout

      Those inefficiencies are intentional. Early typewriters would jam if you typed too quickly, so an inefficient layout was designed that spread out the most common letters.
      • I've seen this debunked as an "urban myth," and seen it reaffirmed as truth, so it's hard to say whether this is actually what the design was based on, but the other side of the story is that QWERTY keyboards were not designed to slow down the typist to avoid jams, but were designed with the most common letters furthers apart because if letters very close to each other were pressed in quick succession it would cause jams. With the common letters further apart, the typist could actually type very fast without jamming the typewriter.
        • The best article I've seen attempting to debunk this is The Fable of the Keys [utdallas.edu]. I haven't seen a rebuttal of this from the Dvorak camp, but I'm sure that it exists. In short, the article claims that the Sholes (QWERTY) keyboard, far from being an arbitrary selection, actually was the survivor from a number of conteporaneous keyboard designs. On the other hand, most of the "studies" cited to support the Dvorak arrangement by those advocating the arrangement before hand, or even by LtC Dvorak himself.
          • The authors of The Fable of the Keys are economists and are not experts in user interface design.

            The design of everyday things [amazon.com] by Don Norman [jnd.org] contains more accurate information. In brief, Dvorak is better than QWERTY, but only by about 10%, so it's not worthwhile to switch.
          • Dvorak is actually not much faster than QWERTY (neither slower), but as an experienced Dvorak typist, I can assure that it puts LOTS less strain on your fingers.

            However, LaTeX with all the backslashes and C/C++/Perl all remain cumbersome, because Dvorak was optimized for English language and not for computer programming languages that use almost every printable character in the ASCII set. I'm just in doubt whether dollar ($) and backquote (`) have any obscure meaning in C++

    • I looked at the site, and it's pretty interesting. I would have a very hard time switching from QWERTY for keyboard typing. This is because muscle memory tells me how to type letters and even entire words very quickly. With a pda, it's different. There is one stylus you hold in one hand and you have to visually find each key to press it. Even when you know QWERTY very well, this is a time-consuming process. The nice thing about this new layout is: 1) letters used together most often tend to be next to each other. 2) Letters near A in the alphabet tend to be at the upper-left, and letters near Z tend to be at the lower-right. This actually seems quite nice.
  • First, ATOMIK has higher movement efficiency for stylus typing than any other existing touch keyboards. This was achieved by a Metropolis optimization algorithm in which the keyboard was treated as a "molecule" and each key as an "atom". The "atomic" interactions among all of the keys drove the movement efficiency - defined by the summation of all Fitts's law movement times between every pair of keys,
    weighted by the statistical frequency of the corresponding pair of letters in English - towards the minimum.
    So what about other languages?
  • is a robotic hand that can write that fast
  • I wonder how similar this would be to the one handed DVORAK keyboard layout.

    • Quite different.

      One-handed Dvorak takes advantage of the fact that you have four fingers to type with, and is meant for touch-typing. (Hence all the vowels are clumped together.) Dvorak is limited by the physical hardware (i.e. they can't create a new physical key).

      ATOMIK is designed for typing with one appendage, and is designed for hunt-and-peck. It is not limited by the physical location of keys. (Hence it has five rows of letters.)
  • Some posters are saying it's just the same concept used in other schemes. From what I gather reading the article, it's not. It's a standard 'press one key at a time' keyboard, which everyone knows how to use, but they have optimized the layout so going from one key to the next is as fast as possible on average (in English writing, that is). Then they made up the required buzzwords for the PHBs of the world, the whole 'molecular synergy paradigm' crap.
  • and every other alternative, which is the fact that it isn't qwerty. I know on the face of it is sounds like a stupid reason but there is logic in the stupidity...

    As much as I would want to learn a faster method of typing. unless I can use the same keyboard everywhere I am (at home - easy, at college - hard, at work - you try asking your boss to switch), then I will never be able to learn the new keyboard layout because I'm frever switching back and to from a qwerty keyboard layout. As is mentioned in nearly every dvorak tutorial I have seen, you need to use the same layout all the time until you are proficient with the new layout. Switching back and to between layouts only lowers your typing speed in both layouts.

    Now, if somebody could come up with a keyboard (cheaply, I dont want to sell my firstborn to type faster), that physically remaps the keys (so I can select US/UK keyboard layout in windows, but get a different layout on the actual keyboard), this would mean I could take this keyboard with me wherever I went (although on a palm it might be difficult), and use it in work, college, as well as at home, simpy unplugging the old keyboard and inserting the new without messing up the software settings that managers/admins won't hate you for 'hacking/cracking the network'.
    • The problem with this argument is that it assumes that a human can only learn one method of input. In the same way that video game players can switch between two (or more) similar video games with different methods of control using the same input device, it is also possible for one to learn different keyboard layouts for different systems. It's the same difference between using a rotary telephone and a pushbutton telephone. It's the same difference between an automatic or manual transmission. It's the same difference between doing shots or pounding beers ... ok ... mebbe not :-)

      Humans are adaptable ... and it's been proven through Aging Studies that continuous learning of new concepts delays the onset of aging related afflictions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc.

      • The problem with this argument is that it assumes that a human can only learn one method of input.
        It's not impossible, but it is very difficult when the two means are similar enough to interfere with one another. Prior knowledge can interfere with developing new skills; there's a term from psychology to describe the phenomenon but damned if I can remember what it is.
        • It's not impossible, but it is very difficult when the two means are similar enough to interfere with one another

          Indeed. I used to a be a 70+ wpm qwerty typist, until I decided to switch to Dvorak this past January. After eight months, I mostly have my speed back, but now whenever I'm forced to use qwerty, I have to resort to hunt-and-peck. At any rate, Dvorak is much more comfortable, and I'm happy I made the switch -- I just don't see how anyone could ever manage to keep track of both keyboard layouts in their head.

    • Did you or the person MODing you up actually read the article??? This is not an physical keyboard, it's for the touchpad of your palm type device. Not many people have used a QWERTY keyboard with the palm Stylus...

    • This is a keyboard for YOUR Palm/Visor/Workpad. You know, that little device that you take wherever you go?

      So will you be able to use the same keyboard at home as you do at work and at school? Yes! Because you're typing into the same device!

      This is only a problem if you have fifty different PDA's that you actively use. (And if that's a problem for you, I can help: give me some of them.)
    • (Ignoring the fact that the author doesn't seem to realize we're talking about on-screen keyboards...)

      I have a theory that our brains memorize the querty keyboard layout only in connection with our fingers. Even though I can type pretty fast on a regular keyboard, when faced with an on-screen keyboard, I'm back to hunt-and-peck (at least to some extent.) My ingrained knowledge of querty isn't a very big help.

      On top of that, a physical keyboard is used with ten styluses scattered across the length of the device (ie. your fingers), whereas a Palm keyboard uses only one. It is therefore a great advantage to have all of the buttons in a small square instead of a long thin rectangle. Imagine you wanted to enter lots of numeric data using one finger. Would you use the number keys at the top of your keyboard, or would you use the numeric keypad? The situation is the same when inputting characters with a stylus -- it's much better to have the keys arranged in a square (especially when you know the most common ones can be found near the centre of that square.)
    • DMB Ergonomics [dmb-ergonomics.com] carries Kinesis, Fox Bay and Contour ergonomics keyboards, keyboard arms, trays, supports and contour mise.

      They carry QWERTY/DVORAK QD® SWITCHABLE [dmb-ergonomics.com] , which allows to switch from DVORAK to QWERTY on the same keyboard and the best thing is it not something that the OS needs to support it's all done on the keyboard.

      There is also programmable keyboards -- Like the Proffessional which has "Programmable Key Layout - anyone can easily set keys to suit individual needs" and has on-board memmory for 24 macros holding up to 142 Characters each.

      The Professional QD for PC (Qwerty/Dvorak convertible) costs $355.50, which the simplier Professional for PC costs $319.50.

      It's not a matter of if you can switch to a different layout. It's a matter of (1) do you want to spend so much on a keyboard? and (2) do you really want to have to take your keyboard with you(to work, ...)?

      There is more information at the kinesis [kinesis-ergo.com] website on there keyboards.

      Chad

  • Good picture (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Simm0 ( 236060 ) on Saturday August 25, 2001 @03:26PM (#2216601) Homepage
    Here's [ibm.com] a better image of what the keyboard actally looks like.
    • Here's a JPEG [ibm.com] of the sticker itself. Use xv or whatever to crop it at the outer line boundary (the copyright is not part of the sticker), and print it at about 164pt x 60pt. You'll get a pretty good approximation you can tape to your Palm and it will work until your sticker comes in the mail.

  • It's about time... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gazbo ( 517111 ) on Saturday August 25, 2001 @03:26PM (#2216603)
    ...That we move away from using a qwerty keyboard just because it's what the computer professionals are used to. Admittedly the immediate effect would be for me (and every other /.er) to drop to a sluggish hunt-and-peck typing style, but in the future it should be easier to learn for novices, and boost everybody's wpm.

    Also, I think the idea of designing the keyboard according to Fitts' law applied to a certain language is a cunning idea - seems the obvious choice to boost wpm and reduce typing strain. Of course it'd have to be changed for other languages, but that is a fairly simple task, and it's not like it doesn't happen already (the French azerty, anyone?)

    Of course, we'll have to wait for a hardware version with all keys implemented before it's worth learning.
    • ATOMIK won't be a replacement for conventional touch type keyboards. The ATOMIK interface is optimised for entering characters using a single stylus. When touch typing, more than one finger is used to press the keys on the keyboard, making ATOMIK unsuitable.

      It's not optimised for touch typing.

      • Actually this is an interesting point, and I stand corrected. A keyboard optimised for a single stylus that works by keeping commonly grouped characters located close to each other may turn out to be a hinderance for a touch typist, as it would tend to force a couple of fingers on one hand at a time to do most of the typing.

        Perhaps for a hardware keyboard a more sensible option would be to keep commonly grouped characters on opposite sides of the keyboards, to distribute the typing between both hands. However, it may make sense to keep common groups of characters that happen to fall on the same side of the keyboard to all fall on the same row, to reduce the strain in each hand - useful in this age of RSI.

        Obviously this is just guesswork on my part, and really needs the same sort of research as with ATOMIK, but it is an idea.
  • What's really cool about this keyboard is it turns common words (like "the") into gestures.


    -m

  • I can now read /. 80% faster (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25, 2001 @03:31PM (#2216615)
    Wow, after reading the article I found that by creating analogies I can accelerate anything I try.

    To prove the point, I treat /. as bread. Each article is a loaf, each post is a slice. Not only has this accelerated my reading. I don't feel as hungry.

    If I read a few slices in the morning, I don't need to visit /. until lunch.

    Thanks IBM! Thanks /.!

  • Crashes with MemoryMgr.c, Line: 4340, NULL handle. Perhaps its interfering with some of my other extensions. Or the half dozen other things I've got installed with patch system traps on the Palm. None the less, sloppy coding by Big Blue...

    Al.
    • You need to use the X-Master hack software.

      There is a link to it in the 'Requirements' section of the site.

  • My favourite alt keyboard-like input has to be Thumbscript [thumbscript.com]. It uses the 9 keys of a number-pad (like on a phone) to input characters. There's a free PalmOS hack, but I would really like to use it with real (physical) buttons, like the prototype pager on the home page./p

  • The problem with tap typing is that you don't get any benefit from 10 fingers. So they're all basically the same. And I still prefer graffiti because I can use it without even looking down at my PDA.

    Also, the Palm Keyboard is only $100US, and is really terrific if you are just looking for portability and super-fast input without having to re-learn a keyboard.

  • My keyboard is made of atoms and molecules, and I bought it two years ago.
  • I was thinking, wouldn't it make more since to make it similar to a keyboard layout? For those of us who actually have that type of keyboard layout memorized? It pretty much means any computer user will need to move back and forth between the two layouts. It would decrease my typing time tremendiously.

    Just some random thoughts.
  • 1f 3v3ryb0dy 7yp35 1ik3 7hi5, w3 w0n'7 n33d 5700p1d n3w l4y0u75. J0057 4dd 4 f3w k3y5 70 7h3 n00m3ric 0n3.

    (and you thought script kiddies' typing was useless... sheesh).

  • Being a Fitaly user for about six months, I can now tap more than 50 wpm. However that wpm rate only applies when I am typing a lot of text and do not have my Stowaway with me.

    From looking at the pictures provided, there are a few reasons temping me to learn a new key layout and switch to ATOMIK. First of all, IBM has managed to fit the number pad into their basic keypad. Whereas on Fitaly [the-gadgeteer.com] you would need to press the little '123' button to get a number pad. This may not seem like a big deal, however I do find a lot of the time I dont even use the '123' button, but just write the numbers in Graffiti (I use Fitaly virtual keyboard so the Graffiti area is still available).

    Secondly, rarely used keys such as 'w, x, y, z' are placed together on the bottom right of the keypad, which is easy to remember and find. Fitaly on the other hand, because they map their keys based on frequency of individual keys (rather than pair of keys) used, the letters 'w, x, y, z' are found scattered around the outer border of the keypad. The placement of these keys on Fitaly slow me down greatly, and it seems ATOMIK may have found a better solution.

    Now I know I may sound like I am strongly in favor of IBMs ATOMIK, but its only because I have used Fitaly for so long and know all the advantages/disadvanges of it. I do believe it is possible for ATOMIK to take over Fitaly as the replacement keypad of choice on handheld devices, but I wront really know until I give it a try. Nonetheless, the design looks very promising.

    [FAT]Ranger

    • How long did it take you to get up to 50wpm with the Fitaly stamp? I tried it a while back and with it, I wasn't much faster than what I could do with grafiti. Quikwriting looks promising too. I would prefer a stylus input method where the movement is more fluid and continuous and not a lot of tapping. Fitaly and this method are still prone to bad spots on the digitizer, so don't tap too hard.

  • Man, I want to see someone writing 40 words minutes on that thing, Oh, and writting something intelligible, not sakhkdsfhdkhnssakohdwkldhas's :)

    Imagine that little plastic pen, imagine the guy's face while hitting that thing like crazy and sticking his tongue out in the middle of a meeting.

    "hey Joe, what are you doing? playing tag against a pixel?"

    :)

  • the ANN in my Newton understands me so well, sometimes I think she - sorry it - loves me. At night she sleeps under my pillow too. Keyboards? who needs them when you can have a mchine that LOVES you?
  • 1. Go to the main page
    2. At the bottom, click (request one here):
    3. Fill out form
  • I don't know Korean, but for Chinese and Japanese input methods, it's very common to let phrase appear for choice after one word is input. It isn't useful for English using keyboard, coz' reading the screen to find the correct word after inputing a few characters just slowing thing down. However, that's a good idea on Palm, where there's no keyboard and you need to search for that character key to touch anyway.

    Now I can tell my friends who told me that CJK input methods were not interesting to English speaking world were wrong.
  • The first is a french company that not many in the world have heard about:
    e-acute [e-acute.fr] [e-acute.fr], which uses one of the more unusual keyboards I have ever seen, which is a spoked wheel of penstrokes. I gave this a quick run through and it certainly is interesting, more so for very-small PDAs.

    The second is the Palm keyboard replacement that I think is the best and a work of virtuosity, and certainly doesn't get the coverage it deserves. It is a free piece of software called VirtualKB [freewarepalm.net] [freewarepalm.net).
    A guy named Gustavo Broos (I looked up his name on the 'About' screen so he gets some credit for this fine work) made a free Hack that lets a keyboard layout template be configured by the enduser instead of the Palm keyboard's default layout. Brilliantly thought out, with an improved cut/copy/paste/undo/redo/find micro-toolbar also across the top of the window. Works nice for international character sets too, so don't have to endlesslessly switch between the two keyboards. Also good for pre-OS 3.5 users (like myself) who want to use graffiti strokes while the keyboard is displayed.

    I suppose one could map this IBM keyboard layout to a VirtualKB if they run out of stickers after being slashdotted :)

  • With talking, typing, handwriting, and even graffiti, you don't have to pay too much attention to the data entry method itself while you're entering the data. Thus your senses are free for other tasks. This input method seems like it would require you to have your eyes glued to that little keyboard all the time. I wonder if anyone has done studies comparing input methods like this against the old standbys, but comparing not only input speed and accuracy, but other factors like comprehension. E.G. compare this against note-taking with pen and paper, but then ask questions about the subject matter.
  • Can be found here:

    http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/demos/quikwriting.htm l

    .
    .
  • Fitt's law, the law this keyboard layout is based on, is from human factors. Like most of the stuff in human factors, it's common sense made difficult. Basically what it says is that the speed and accuracy of hitting a "target" (key) are related to how big and how close the target is. Shocking, huh?

    They naturally presumed that you'd hit the spacebar more often than any other key, so that became the center. Frequently pressed keys are arranged close to the center to minimize the distance your stylus travels to hit them. What they're talking about when they call it "molecular" is that letters which are hit frequently one after another are placed closer together, and that they considered all the two-letter combinations in english to see which were the most important groupings.

    You guys are getting the wrong idea when you talk about replacing qwerty with this. The major difference, obviously, is that we have many fingers but only one stylus. This is also why a chord system doesn't enter the picture here. The developers are trying to increase the speed of entry with just a stylus. (Fitt's law still applies to fingered systems, but it's greatly complicated.)

    Personally, I'd like to see a PDA which is intended for two-handed use, something shaped more or less like an N64 controller, but with the buttons on the underside, and for fingers not thumbs. It'd be bigger, but more useful.

    For data entry, voice is another option, but I'd actually rather type than speak. Besides all the technical difficulties in voice recognition, I think I'd prefer the privacy of typing in the many situations where I don't want my stored information to be public. (plus, I'd feel pretty stupid dictating to a PDA in an office cube.)

    I hope I'm not just stating the blatantly obvious.

  • The optimization disappears when you write another language. English is common, but it is not the only one. Worse yet, there are accents and tildes that further complicates this picture.
  • i was wondering why we are still using qwerty at work until i realized that i usually don't code more than a few lines in an hour. having a faster keyboard layout would make my productivity artificially lower, scary thought. eh

    :/
  • The license for the software expires after 90 days. How easy is it to peel off the sticker?

    2. Term and Termination

    This Agreement will terminate ninety (90) days after the date on which you receive the Software. Upon such termination you will delete or destroy all copies of the Software.

  • In 1968 Douglas C. Engelbart presented not only hypertext and the mouse. He also used a keyboard consisting of 5 keys only. It looked like a very short piano keyboard. By pressing the keys in combination, he was able to type with one hand, blindly, at high speed.

    I think it was more or less his only invention at the presentation that didn't make it into a mainstream product.

    Two years ago, I modified the design by integrating microswitches into a joystick-formed object, and wrote a small driver for BeOS. I also thought about integrating a pointer device like the one in IBM notebooks, but never did so.

    The microswitches were suboptimal, and I never really learned to write fast with it. But other people reported that they could write on a 5 button keyboard much faster than on a conventional one.

    I think the modified design of the 5 button keyboard might be an ideal input device for PDAs and wearables. They're compact. Plus you can use them to point and type blindly, and do so fast.
  • The big advantage I see to Grafiti (sp?) is that I don't have to look at my palm to keep writing. I can be looking at the person I'm talking too, or at a presenters screen. Try to do that with a keyboard no matter how optomized it is.

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