Alternate keyboards for handhelds

[MintJulep]

Since getting an Android based smartphone a few months ago I've been using the SWYPE keyboard. I've gotten pretty good with it, but remain a bit frustrated with missing keys occasionally, and with it's bad habit of adding every name in my address book to its dictionary.

This afternoon, in a fit of boredom, I installed the 8pen keyboard.

http://www.the8pen.com/

After a minute of playing I was ready to delete it.

After five minutes I was beginning to see its potential.

After fifteen minutes I was thinking it's pretty cool.

I'm not as fast as I am with SWYPE just yet, but in a day or so I think I will be, or faster, and more accurate.

 

[ivymike]

I don't use a smartphone, but that looks like a pretty reasonable interface for one. my wife's annoys the hell out of me with its itty-bitty touchscreen keys.

 

[zdas04]

That looks interesting and I can see where you would develop muscle memory like we did in typing class.

My question is "what nationality was the accent of the lady narating?". I'm not that good with guessing the origin of accented English, but I kept getting a feeling of Ireland as she talked. Is that right?

David

 

[johnhors]

David,

Possibly French? See below.

BTW my Samsung only gives me a qwerty layout when I turn it through 90 degrees and get a landscape type display which is of course that bit larger, but still too damn small!


Registrant:
Michael Fester
44 Rue des Tournelles
Paris, 75004
France

Domain Name: THE8PEN.COM
Created on: 21-Oct-10
Expires on: 21-Oct-12
Last Updated on: 21-Oct-10

Administrative Contact:
Fester, Michael
44 Rue des Tournelles
Paris, 75004
France
0033638993633 Fax --

Technical Contact:
Fester, Michael

http://www.Roshaz.com

 

[patprimmer]

Accents can be difficult. I remember once traveling with a Japanese man who was taught English by a Frenchman. He had an interesting and confusing accent.

Also in Europe, local variations even in one city can be strong enough to be clearly differentiated even as they speak English once you have experience with them.


Regards
Pat
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[evelrod]

My ex brother in law was from Boston. You can get confused just by going from one side of town to the other.

Same deal for a couple of my racer pals from London.

Rod

 

[patprimmer]

Lisa Doolittle and Henry Higgins where both Londoners I think.

Regards
Pat
See FAQ731-376 for tips on use of eng-tips by professional engineers &

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm

for site rules

 

[MintJulep]

Here I start a nice thread to discuss the technical merits of alternative technology, and it's hijacked to talk about accents.

 

[zdas04]

Sorry, I didn't think my hijacking nudge would get the momentum it did.

The keyboard technique is pretty cool, right now it would just work on the 'Droid phones, right? Can you load that app on an iPhone? Are there any other keyboard-less phones out there?

David

 

[MintJulep]

It looks like an iPhone version of 8pen is under development. I don't see it in the Apple App Store yet.

 

[VEBill]

I wonder why they couldn't just allow the user to draw the letters ("a", "b", etc.) on the same screen? If not possible today, then give it another month or two...

Once trained in 8pen, someone would eventually ask you to fill-out a form (with a pen) and you'd have it half-done in 8pen squiggles before you realized what you were doing. ;-)

 

[zdas04]

I saw a demo of the iPad the other day where the guy was writing about as fast as I can type and the computer turned it into typed text without introducing any errors at all. His handwriting was pretty consistent, but not perfect. He said that the OCR software has a "learn" feature that has made it a lot more effective. I had the same thing on a PDA 10 years ago, but I never got it to work consistently.

It seems like that handwriting with OCR has a better chance of success than 8Pen since learning a new manual skill gets so much harder past 10 years old.

David

 

[MintJulep]

After just two days use I'm getting faster with 8pen and have pretty much memorized where the characters are.

More interesting than the speed is the increased accuracy. Since the zones are much bigger than an individual key on a soft keypad it's much more tolerant of "missed" keys.

A little bit of digging turned up a precursor from the Palm days -

http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/quikwriting/

It seems like a few of the NYU students that worked on quikwriting are a bit miffed that 8pen is applying for a patent of a very similar interface.