Renfield Kuroda wrote:
> established Western market leaders need to wake up and accept the fact
> that, in a couple of short years, the predominant Internet device will
> NOT be a PC with QWERTY keyboard, but a cellphone with a 10key,
Although you've got a point that many for many Japanese users 10 keys is
there first type of keyboard and they are happy and proficient with this
etc. etc., would it not seem sensible to presume that there will come a
stage when they will want to evolve from this and that surely tens keys
can't be the limit of technology.
Voice recognition and input will continue to develop and increase in use,
although I doubt it will ever totally replace silent input methods. Someone
also mentioned graffiti - one level up from that is handwriting recognition.
This is already my preferred and fastest method of input on my Pocket PC and
will probably be an important input means for tablet PCs. (I think there
will be a learning curve similar to learning how to use a keyboard when
learning how input using handwriting recognition, as the technology will
never be able to guess 100% correctly all the time so some handwriting
modification will be necessary).
An interesting note is that the DoCoMo G-FORT Pocket PC comes with what they
call a Cut Key keyboard. This has twelve main keys for letters, numbers or
functions (in combination with the Fn (=Alt like) key) and another 12 minor
ones for backspace, escape, changing input method/type, space, enter and Fn
(=Alt). The interesting part is that the letter keys are laid out in four
rows of three as follows from left to right, top to bottom: a, i, u, e, o,
xyz, kgf, szj, tdv, ncq, hbp, rml. I wonder if anyone will be willing to get
used to this new layout. Anyone seen this on any other device?
Andrew
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Received on Wed Jan 24 17:28:07 2001