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5 Tiles Keyboard

35 pointsby intullalmost 11 years ago

17 comments

cool-RRalmost 11 years ago
Public service announcement to all companies that are trying to sell us keyboards or keyboard-like solutions:<p>I fully expect, when I go into your site, to see a video of someone using your keyboard to type FAST. (Which is probably the most important criteria in a keyboard.)<p>This is essential because if your own people who developed the keyboard can only get to X wpm, odds are low that your average users are going to exceed X wpm.<p>If I don&#x27;t see a video of someone using your keyboard to type fast, <i>I&#x27;m going to assume that you were not able to produce such a video, because your keyboard doesn&#x27;t really allow for someone to type fast, which means that your keyboard is pretty much useless.</i><p>Thank you.
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gbogalmost 11 years ago
If the people doing this are listening: I don&#x27;t think the business model is ok. If this keyboard is to get some traction, it will require us users to use it for real before paying. You can&#x27;t have a keyboard lite, it&#x27;s a vital utility, not a game. If I type a url or a password and discover that a character is only on premium, I&#x27;ll switch back to my usual keyboard and not look back.<p>Another remark: typing number is very important and must be safe and fast, I didn&#x27;t see a number mode. It should be easily done on five tiles.
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nzonbialmost 11 years ago
This is an interesting design, independently if it may or may not be successful. In my opinion the keyboard should be reinvented. The qwerty and similar designs works, but not for everybody. I for example, took a course on using qwerty correctly, with all fingers, and without having to look at it, and failed. I can type fairly fast, but must look at the keys most of the time, and mostly use both index fingers only. The arrangement feels not intuitive for me, more like a mess. I can&#x27;t never remember where a key is located exactly. All I can memorize are approximate locations. I am sure that at least for me, there could be better keyboard implementations. I have been thinking, and have some ideas. Both for on-screen touch, and physical keyboards. I may try implementing them soon.<p>There is currently a cool trend on the PC market, in which companies are trying innovative form factors. The hybrid laptop-tablets are becoming popular. There are great devices on the market. MS surface 3, lenovo yoga and miix, asus convertibles, acer R7 and switch, are good examples. But the way I see it, these devices are saddened by the ugly and not cool qwerty keyboards. I wonder why those companies that have the resources, and are eager to differentiate on the market, haven&#x27;t tried any alternative to the old qwerty. The world needs more creativity. For example, what does stop Microsoft, from offering a choice of alternative keyboard implementations as surface covers? In my opinion this is a big missed opportunity, and I hope these companies realize it someday. In the meantime, I may soon come up with a homemade alternative keyboard for my personal use.<p>For those that the qwerty keyboard works, they should continue using it. But for those that don&#x27;t, which I suspect are the majority, could use alternatives. There is an interesting opportunity in the market for those that realize it.
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tsmalmost 11 years ago
On the subject of alternative keyboards, I&#x27;ve been using MessagEase (<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exideas.mekb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.exideas.me...</a>) for about a year and am pretty pleased with it. It&#x27;s still roughly the size of a regular QWERTY keyboard, but the buttons are enormous, and I can type any letter, number, or symbol I care about without modifier keys. (It accomplishes this by differentiating between taps and short swipes—so each button has nine characters assigned to it, the tapping one and then eight for swiping to each side&#x2F;corner.)
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leanthonyrnalmost 11 years ago
&quot;Our brains were structured for 5 digits.&quot; I would think, if that was the case, we would first optimize our alphabet for 25&#x2F;20&#x2F;15&#x2F;10&#x2F;5 characters. Then this would be ideal.
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Splendoralmost 11 years ago
Neither the video or images were compelling enough to get me to install a free app. Show me someone using the keyboard.
1risalmost 11 years ago
Absolutly awesome. I tried serveral alternative keyboards since the day i own a smartphone, this is the first one I liked right from the start. Minuum seemed pretty lame, haven&#x27;t tried it, but I tried Swype, Swiftkey, GKOS, 8Pen, and a morse-key keyboard. The latter was very neat in theory, but the learning curve was just to steep. Now, starting form thre and increasing the number of buttons from two to five and adding hints on for the fly is IMO genius. Two thumbs up. Now i want a smartwatch. I just wished there was a explanation what the difference between the light and the full version is.<p>&#x2F;edit: And I think i have a bug: The Enter key does not work, or is that a limitation of the free edition? Could be, I will buy the full version tomorrow.<p>&#x2F;edit2: No, it&#x27;s just that i confused &quot;enter&quot; and &quot;go&quot;.
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Hasualmost 11 years ago
I can&#x27;t figure out how I&#x27;m expected to use more than one digit on this thing at once. I usually type on a touchscreen keyboard with at least two fingers(either both thumbs, or the index and middle finger of one hand).<p>The sliding action makes using two different hands impossible- I can&#x27;t type many characters without having to move my thumbs out of each others&#x27; way. That won&#x27;t work.<p>This leads me to think that I should use one hand, maybe even four fingers. But then my entire hand moves position every time I have to slide, which means I have to move my entire hand back to the start position to use a different finger for the next character.<p>The only way I can type with this system is using a single finger, and that&#x27;s just way too slow.
smoyeralmost 11 years ago
I sometimes do serious work from my Android phone and the keyboard is extremely important ... I haven&#x27;t found anything that approaches the convenience of this keyboard: <a href="http://www.meritline.com/logitech-tablet-keyboard-android-920-003390---p-75240.aspx?source=fghdac&amp;gclid=CjkKEQjwqYacBRDO-Mrk6_vr8eQBEiQAWJadfI_zvT9tG0-kM5AUFaTKLU1Q6FVpBBml6r83endabIHw_wcB" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.meritline.com&#x2F;logitech-tablet-keyboard-android-92...</a>
digganalmost 11 years ago
Hm, feels like this should make it more complicated to enter text. Let&#x27;s say I have a telephone and it has 11 buttons. 0 - 9, call and hang up. This is easy for a person to remember and use.<p>But, if we have a telephone with 4 buttons, 0 - 5 is one button, 6 - 9 is another, call and hang up is two others, the telephone becomes MORE complex and hard to use.<p>One button, one functionality feels like the easiest and fastest way to type, mentally.
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k-mcgradyalmost 11 years ago
Just downloaded it to try. WAY too high of a learning curve. For example to delete a character you swipe up on the first tile (likely accidentally activating Google Now). To show&#x2F;hide the cheat sheet swipe down on the fourth tile. I can tell right from the start this is way too much information to remember. Swiping keyboards already work pretty well and are quite easy to pickup.
keerthikoalmost 11 years ago
The way they provide responses to their user reviews on the Play store is a bit off-putting -- they have a very &quot;you&#x27;re doing it wrong&quot; tone, rather than accepting the premises and complaints of their users.<p>I think the basic concept is intriguing, but the lack of intuitive execution is a huge show-stopper when competing with things like swype.
techaddict009almost 11 years ago
Is is it inspired from Google&#x27;s Gmail Tap April Fool Prank?<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KhZKNZO8mQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=1KhZKNZO8mQ</a>
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gweinbergalmost 11 years ago
It seems to me that four would be a much better number than five, since our thumbs do not line up with our fingers.
RBerenguelalmost 11 years ago
Pretty similar to other endeavours previously discussed here (like ASETNIOP)
Roboprogalmost 11 years ago
So it&#x27;s like having 10 or 12 buttons to write a text, only worse???
Siecjealmost 11 years ago
Doug Engelbart was right about the future.