Gmail Tap

[Qfwfq]

It's the next big future in communication! This month starts straight away, on its very first day, with this great novelty for mobile! I just can't wait to try it out!

[CraigD]

Gmail Tap appears to be Google’s 2012 April fools joke – and I, at least, to have been fooled again :doh:

 

I still think it’s a cool idea. Calling it “novel” however, is a bit of a stretch, I think. Functionally, it’s simply a Morse code key similar to the traditional 2-way paddle kind, without the difficult but speed-increasing repeat features these have, but with a space key. Its code is regular Morse code.

 

While the space key allows you to avoid the 7-beat pause (which takes precisely the same duration to enter as - . -/M), it looks like Google tap still needs to wait for a timeout to detect the 3-beat (same as T/-) end of letter condition. This makes it a timer, rather than a key event -driven scheme. At the risk of user confusion, such schemes can gain a little speed by using the duration of the preceding keystrokes to determine a variable-length timeout, but since each letter still requires an average of about 3.5 taps +timeout, so can’t approach the speed of an ordinary, 1-keystroke per letter keyboard.

 

The only non-keyboard input scheme I’ve seen that approach a keyboards within a factor or 2 are the old Grafitti1 PalmOS device scheme (Grafitti2, required as the OS default due to the legal fallout of Palm having essentially stolen Grafitti1, requires timeouts for some letters, so like Tap, is timer-contrained) and sign language finger spelling (I’ve never seen an actual implementation of finger spelling, but am confident it’s possible).

 

Good as Grafitti1 is (or perhaps it’s better to say “was”, as the old PalmOS is essentially antique), it’s not in my experience as fast as legible pen/pencil scribbling on paper.

 

One appealing advantage Tap has over Grafitti, onscreen or slider keyboards, or any sort of input scheme I’ve seen I’ve yet seen, is that it you can one-hand key with the same hand you hold the device with. Years ago, I experimented with the idea of incorporating a sort of chording keyboard into the edges of a handheld’s case to allow one-handing, but never got as far as prototyping an actual box. One hand-ability is a very valuable, and I think, underappreciated, virtue in an input device, because it allows the normally 2-person pick up, read aloud/enter operation common to “inventorying” activities of many kinds to be done by one person.

 

Text entry on phone and tablet devices is still a problem to be solved, I think. A couple of weeks ago, I had one of those stunningly ironic experience you wonder how many other 500-800 people in the audience are feeling. At “big room” presentation at a developers and leaders conference, a WSJ tech journalist was doing an interview-style presentation with 2 big tech company CEOs, both of whom were jotting notes on paper legal pads. One began talking about his new IPad (this was on 3/19, when IPad3s were new enough to attract attention), revealing that he’d been using one to hold his legal pad.

 

That the highest rated keyboardless computer in human history, in the hands of an executive with a personal tech support team dedicated to maintaining and training him in its use, can’t replace the humble legal pad, is, I think, very telling.

 

My personal prognostication is that typing on virtual keyboard projected by AR eyepieces will be the breakthrough scheme that allows little mobile devices to match and beat the text input performance of the physical keyboard.

[Qfwfq]

– and I, at least, to have been fooled again :doh:

I'm not surprised. You're not even the only one I've heard saying he actually likes the idea.

 

The cherry on the cake was how the guy at the end got so moved, saying the last words of his line.