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]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: buttons, haptics, input devices, keyboards, multi-touch, sensors, speech recognition, touchscreens, ui
Companies: keyboardio, kickstarter, nuance
Comments on “DailyDirt: Better Keyboards”
I’m totally interested in keyboard improvements and such for mobile and portable devices. But when at a nice stable desk, I’m still of the opinion that there is nothing better than a classic IBM Model M.
Re: Re:
“I’m totally interested in keyboard improvements and such for mobile and portable devices”
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.
My fingers are still longing back to the days of the Volker Craig VT-52 terminal
Key labels
30 years ago I had a keyboard with a little LCD strip above the function keys, so that software could label what each function key was for. Why can’t I buy one today?
(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.)
A hard non-tactile surface as a keyboard?
Thanks, but no.
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.
Keyboards
My fingers still ache at the memory of the mechanical typewriters before the IBM Selectric. Ever since then I prefer a good cross point mechanical switch based keyboard.
Das Keyboard?
Anyone here try Das Keyboard? They were inspired by the IBM Model M. The result was their Model S.
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.
They keep trying to “improve” things that really don’t need improving. Just like Microsoft keeps trying to “improve” Windows by changing things for no apparent reason.
speech recognition versa keyboard
Do you really know how quick is our voice? Last month I had a job to transcribe audio and I have used https://speechpad.pw site for this job. So, for the 1.5 second the man in this audio said 3-7 words!
I use http://www.speechtexter.com