DailyDirt: Better Keyboards
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Keyboards are one of the fastest and most accurate ways to input text into a digital device. Sure, you could argue that speech recognition has beaten a txting champion (Ben Cook in 2006), but the more common experience with speech recognition is far from perfect dictation results. Early keyboards used some relatively complex mechanical designs to achieve a nice tactile feel and accurate input -- replaced by various iterations of keyboard improvements to become thinner and lighter and more (or less) clicky-sounding. Here are just a few more attempts to make better keyboards.- Designing a keyboard isn't as easy as you might think. Okay, maybe it's just as hard as you think it is.... [url]
- It might be neat to have a camera sensor track your hand movements so that any surface could become a keyboard or multi-touch input device. But if it's really that great, why aren't there more of these kinds of camera-based keyboards? [url]
- Touchscreens are lacking in the tactile feedback department, but there's an accessory that features shape-shifting buttons that make raised bumps on a glass surface appear and disappear as needed. Presumably, these shape-shifting bumps don't make clicky noises when you touch them, and making a touchscreen even more complex doesn't sound like a better option than just adding a detachable keyboard for a tablet. [url]
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Filed Under: buttons, haptics, input devices, keyboards, multi-touch, sensors, speech recognition, touchscreens, ui
Companies: keyboardio, kickstarter, nuance
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Key labels
(The Art Lebedev studio produces keyboards with an LCD screen *in* every key - at hideous cost. I just want a cheap LCD strip above the function keys.)
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A hard non-tactile surface as a keyboard?
My fingertips ache just thinking about tapping on a hard surface at 40 wpm (that's rapping a desk surface about three times a second). These guys must be bible-method typists.
And with no tactile feedback?
Engineers spend a lot of time and effort to provide tactile feedback. In the seventies, a lot of effort was put into photographic cameras so that the user could feel the point where, if the pressed the shutter down 'just a hair', the camera would shoot.
Likewise, for keyboards. There's a reason that these schemes keep failing. The public really doesn't want them.
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Re:
Me too. So far, however, the only improvement that I really long for is an actual, physical keyboard. Those on-screen ones just totally blow. The shape-shifting business to add tactile feedback might be an improvement, but it still wouldn't come remotely close to a physical keyboard.
"there is nothing better than a classic IBM Model M."
Best keyboard ever. I still marvel at how when it comes to keyboard technology, it's been nothing but downhill from there.
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Keyboards
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Das Keyboard?
The on screen keyboard on my HP X11 laptablet running Windows 8.1 is much easier to use than the on screen keyboards on either of my Galaxy Tabs.
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speech recognition versa keyboard
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