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A keyboard that rises up from flat touch screens
- ibizaman 13y agoThis will be really neat!
- Pxtl 13y agoThis would also be great for gaming, since you could use this to provide a d-pad and tactile buttons.
- blueskin_ 13y agoLooks better than a touchscreen, but still not even close to a real keyboard. On the other hand, mobile devices are rarely if ever used for more than 140 chars at a time, I guess.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- alexpw 13y agoArticle published on February 13, 2013 6:24 AM PST. "Tactus says it wants to be in production by the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014." I wonder if there is more recent news on this.
- jgh 13y agoAccording to http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2014/1/14/how-tactus-will-bring-physical-keys-to-more-than-your-touchscreen.aspx http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2014/1/14/how-tactus-wi... they're working with manufacturers now and it we'll start seeing them "soon"
- kunai 13y agohttp://xkcd.com/678/ http://xkcd.com/678/
- belluchan 13y agoAll the cnet author needed was to add a gif or a super short video showing the effect. They did not need to have some long video with voice over with stock footage of people typing for half the video.
- wmeredith 13y agoI was also struck by the hokiness of the video. It looked like something I'd see on my local news.
- waitwhatwhoa 13y agoI wanted one too: https://31.media.tumblr.com/9f889585e1f6611f216ddced210fb134/tumblr_mzvpcjPGdX1qmbrf9o1_400.gif https://31.media.tumblr.com/9f889585e1f6611f216ddced210fb134...
- chrisfarms 13y agoI'm going to guess that the "pump" is probably piezoelectric? ...but however the pressure is created I suspect it will have a significant effect on battery life while the keyboard is active, which is going to make adoption difficult. I'd always take charge over bumpy keys.
- gdulli 13y agoI was just thinking the other day about how the last time I was ever happy composing text on a phone was when I had a Treo. I didn't do it consciously, but ever since Apple introduced the toushcreen keyboard and it became the standard I've changed my mobile usage pattern from primarily producing (composing text) to consuming (reading and playing games.) The novelty of playing games on my phone wore off quickly, but the loss of productivity has been permanent. For anything that isn't passive, the smartphone is more of a chore to use than it used to be. So I hope this works out.
- kordless 13y agoSwipe typing on Android rules.
- omaranto 13y agoIt probably rules on iOS, too.
- cocoflunchy 13y agoExcept that you can't change the default keyboard on iOS.
- reeses 13y agoInterestingly, many of the 'alternative' layouts don't have the same advantages on the phone.[1] For example, any of the layouts that emphasize home row locality, such as the * aks, don't really help when you're typing with two thumbs. The Sholes "slow you down just enough to avoid a physical constraint" method turns out to be useful when you have two digits flopping around with the potential of being in each other's way. Also, you can change the default keyboard at the application level[2], but this leads to annoying "edit here, copy, paste there" workflow solutions. You can also change it at the system level if you have a phone that can be jailbroken. A particularly awesome example of alternative keyboard implementations on iOS is Hipjot[3], which affords two-finger swype-style typing. The developer demonstrates 120wpm touch-typing on his phone[4] and advertises 70-90wpm on the Hipjot app store page. [1] Pretend I acknowledged the iPad. [2] Fleksy includes an SDK option. http://fleksy.com http://fleksy.com [3] http://jormy.com/hipjot/ http://jormy.com/hipjot/ [4] http://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/11/new-ios-swiping-keyboard-capable-of-120wpm-speeds/ http://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/11/new-ios-swiping-keyboard...
- ommunist 13y agoI have read about its prototype couple of years ago. IMHO, clever and cool, but really useless. Ergonomically it is much better to use separate keyboard and separate screen. Think of it as in UNIX philosophy. Screens are for staring, keys are for typing.
- descentintomael 13y agoThis is great for people with mental health issues like OCD. My fiancée (who has OCD) was forced to finally upgrade to a touchscreen smartphone, but I still had to get him a keyboard case so that he would have physical keys to press. Trying to type on a virtual keyboard drives him mad.
- randomdrake 13y agoCNET actually covered this a few years[1] ago when the tech was first being debuted. I remember reading about it because of the mention of the NSF. In that story, they shared the link to the National Science Foundation's grant page[2] for this project. From there, it appears a team of 3 were awarded $149,354.00. I think it's great to see that Kickstarters and VC funding aren't the only ways to get some funding to get good, technical ideas of the ground. [1] - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20072117-1/tactus-touch-screen-sprouts-keys-and-buttons/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20072117-1/tactus-touch-... [2] - http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1047485 http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1047485
- melloclello 13y agoI always mind of expected that someday we'd come up with something more sensible than a miniature Qwerty keyboard for text input on a phone. Something not unlike Swype (or any number of the other alternative keyboards out there) but with an interface which does away with the keyboard metaphor (note that Swype is the only one so far to catch on in any way). (Also note that voice recognition doesn't count, as to compete with a keyboard your input mechanism has to be discreet)
- chenster 13y agoIt's also featured in this year's CES 2014 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJYyy1u1xmQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJYyy1u1xmQ
- jader201 13y agoA bit off topic, but I don't frequent CNET much, and was pleasantly surprised to see Sumi Das in the video and as the author of the article. She was a correspondent on ZDTV/TechTV, which I watched constantly in its day. It may be the first time I've run across something of hers since then.
- aaronem 13y agoOddly enough, this technology was foreseen in a novel, Free Radical [1], which some random fellow on the Internet wrote on the basis of the story from the game System Shock. Quite a good novel, actually, and especially so for being something you just randomly trip over on the web; I recommend it. [1] http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/ http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/
- apendleton 13y agoA couple of things that aren't clear: firstly, does the manufacturer have to commit to certain button combinations at manufacture time, or is it runtime-configurable (in other words, can a user install a different keyboard with different button locations and still use it)? Second, is the user still triggering the keypress event just by touching, or is it actual depression of the button that does it?
- mgkimsal 13y agono idea but... i could see another type of event being needed - keyTouch and keyPress ???
- tobr 13y agoTouch in this case is rather like hover though. Lack of hover is one of the trickiest things in designing for touch screens right now. There's no good way to tell the user a bit more about what's going to happen, until they commit to a touch.
- nickloewen 13y agoI think the answer to the first question lies here: > Currently, the technology is limited in that it's a fixed single array. You wouldn't be able to use the Tactus keyboard in both portrait and landscape mode, for example. But the goal is to make the third generation of the product dynamic. "The vision that we had was not just to have a keyboard or a button technology, but really to make a fully dynamic surface," says cofounder Micah Yairi, "So you can envision the entire surface being able to raise and lower depending on what the application is that's driving it." Meaning it could display a keyboard when you're typing an e-mail, a number pad when you're dialing a phone number, and perhaps letter tiles when you're playing Words With Friends.
- waylandsmithers 13y agoIf this actually works well, this could definitely fall into "just shut up and take my money" territory for me. I still miss the physical keys my old blackberry had.
- chiph 13y agoThey've probably user-tested this, but would you want bubbles, or ridges that appear around & outline the buttons that would guide your fingertip?
- math0ne 13y agoFor a company named tactus it doesn't seem very tactile, if there's no click I don't see the point.
- prawn 13y agoAlso, I'm not sure if there'd be as much benefit when pecking with thumbs (SMS style), typing while holding the device, and that's how they seemed to demonstrate it. If I'm looking to type more than a sentence on a touchscreen, it will generally be on a tablet and with it sitting on a table/lap. And even then, I could get away with something like home keys to stay centred on rather than a raised impression of every key. I'd like to think that future input in these situations will come from something other than an on-screen keyboard that takes up screen real estate.
- seandougall 13y agoAgreed -- if you can't rest your fingers on the keys without accidental input, it doesn't seem like it'd do anything to help enable touch-typing.