The team over at the8pen.com have developed a new method to enter text on mobile devices that they hope will replace the virtual keyboard.
The system divides the input area into four quadrants with letters and symbols in each quadrant. The user starts his finger in the center, swipes toward the desired quadrant, then sweeps their finger around to select the letter. 8pen claims that once the user has mastered the location of letters and swiping method, text entry is faster than with the traditional virtual keyboard.
After watching the intro video, it works a bit differently than I expected. I thought that once your finger entered a quadrant, that quadrant would zoom in to give you an enlarged target from which to select. Instead, you have to sweep your finger (like the hands of a clock) the number of quadrants equal to the distance of the desired letter from the center (the video explains it better).
Regardless, it is a really neat system (patent pending) and to see totally new innovation like this make me really happy that thinking outside of the box is not dead.
See the 8pen Web site and video here: http://www.the8pen.com/
No way this is going to work. Voice to text and Voice technology is getting extremely good. I stress, EXTREMELY good.
ReplyDeleteIt may have been sub-par in the past, but now it is being sold in vehicles. I can predict a political push to make voice to text mandatory in new Cell Phone devices to push saftey. Unless, Apple deploys this feature in the next iPhone OS. If that is the Case others manufacturers will follow
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