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Home My Photo Blog (Moblog) Observations Java Hot Products Books/Knowledge Devices Operators Mobile Messaging My Courses My Profile My ideas/thoughts Techno Vision Blogroll Me! Join Paul's mail list	Thursday, July 31, 2003   :: Intriguing keypad design from Ventris :: Things are getting hot in the race for new keypad designs. I am thinking of introducing a category on my blog just to handle it. It seems that there is a lot of activity going on in this area. Quite rightly, as widely adopted keypad designs could make someone very rich! There is no need to stick to conventions, especially bearing in mind that the QWERTY keypad is actually an exercise in deliberately poor design, aimed at slowing the typist down, not speeding them up. Personally, I just can't seem to stop thinking about text-entry ideas. I avoided writing "keypad ideas", as that may be too limiting to start with. If we doubt that new layouts can be adopted by mobile users, then we may be wrong. Take the 3650 from Nokia, with its circular pad layout. Whilst I personally don't like it and bemoaned the fact that it broke all usability conventions (in the Java gaming context at least), I was intrigued by its complete disruption of the standard layout and what impact that might have on texting. I raised this with one of the testing managers at O2 who assured me that his teenage daughter had "mastered" it within two days and could text as fast as ever. That's not scientific, but still revealing (what would Nielsen make of it?). After Fastap, Unitap and FITALY, I was impressed to receive a note from Ventris, who have come up with a new design called HandyScript. At first glance (right), it looks like a prop out of a Star Trek film, something the Klingons would use - BUT I'M NOT MOCKING. This idea takes a little while to sink in, but I have downloaded the trial version and figured out the concept very quickly just by visual inspection. Of course, what I really need is a mobile version so that I can try it out in a context that interests me. An interesting feature of HandyScript is that it is language independent, able to support multiple languages with the same layout and symbols. This is very intriguing and I would like to examine this more. However, I confess that I have not had much time to formally assess it yet, but I will post a follow-up later. 12:47:02 PM    comment []   :: Unitap utilise FITALY keypad layout :: Those of you following my blog may have read my thoughts on keypads, especially since discovering the wonderful Fastap solution from DigitWireless. My last blog entry mentions Unitap, an almost identical solution from Dutch company RL Technologies who posted a comment highlighting their claimed advantages over Fastap. I was intrigued to receive a note from these guys stating that they have implemented the FITALY keypad layout (right) from Textware solutions, an alternative to the QWERTY layout, one that works better for one-finger (thumb) typing by minimising finger travel over an average lexicon. This was an idea I openly suggested would make sense with this type of technology. Of course, I'm now dying to try one out, but well done you guys at Unitap for supporting the FITALY. The mobile industry needs progressive solutions like Unitap and Fastap! Whether conservative operators will bite is another matter. 12:03:10 PM    comment []   © Copyright 2003 Paul Golding. Last update: 8/3/2003; 1:26:11 PM.	July 2003 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat     1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31     Jun   Aug Sign up to my email list - Send me email Available for hire as consultant via Magic E Company who can also develop software for you. Consult my booklist on Amazon Blogroll: