I got to the point where it was completely coded into muscle memory, I can still type on it without the letters displayed. While it feels really cool when you are using it, there are some pretty fatal flaws.
First off, even when you are going full tilt, it is slower than using the built in keyboard. Tapping the screen is much faster than making a loop on it.
The bigger problem, which I think would be interesting to see addressed, is that there is no tactile feedback to let you know where your finger is. Sometimes you will accidentally hit the middle partway through a figure, giving the wrong character. Other times you are on the wrong side of the dividing lines when you get to the centre. These things happen often enough that it gets annoying having to go back and delete characters.
A quick fix for the "being in the wrong spot" problems would be to make the centre into a square. A more complicated fix would be to try to look at the patterns that advanced users are making and analyze them to figure out what they are actually typing ( If my finger is moving down, I am probably trying to type the top quadrant ).
When you get going, it is pretty cool, but you are still slower than other keyboards, and when you try to relax a bit you will hit the lines in the wrong places from time to time.
A bit of work on making it smarter, and giving some sort of tactile feedback, and it would be a really great way to touch type on a smartphone, but for now it is not worth it.
Also, my major complaint (and the reason I use Swiftkey now) is simply that the built in dictionary is simply not good enough at predicting N-gram sentences that I use often. There are times on swiftkey where I just tap the middle suggestion to write a sentence (although perhaps that's more revealing about my low-entropy text messaging habits than anything)
This is genius as an idea, but I don't know if it could ever catch any sort of momentum in the market. It seems like it would take a long time to become fast at it.
A comparison to keyboards comes to mind - the keys on a keyboard really seem arbitrarily placed (though I am aware of the historical origin of QWERTY). Many people type slowly on keyboards, and it takes a lot of using one to get good at it. However the keys on a keyboard are labeled, so there is a lower threshold for newbies. Imagine what someone would look like typing on a blank keyboard. Their fingers would seem to be flying around at random.
People would be afraid to try learning it. That's what using 8pen is like.
And the problem is, there's no way to ever label all the loops and have them be visible.
It also seems like it would be easy to miss the center circle sometimes when closing a loop. I wish I could try it but I don't own an Android device.
Also, OP are you Gabe Newell or a different gaben?
Maybe if swype and gesture typing didn't exist, and it was still 2010.
(Or do people think this because they are only familiar with the iOS keyboard?)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eightpen.a...
Definitely won't take the place still in my heart for Graffiti ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) ).
When I got my Galaxy note and tried out writing with the stylus -- it was hard to write normal english, grafitti kept on coming out
The explainer video is painful, and does most of the things I find painful in videos like that. Slow paced, oddly accented English, very wordy in places, and essentially monotone. No clear promise about what it's going to show you early on -- the first 15 seconds or so made me disinterested. It got better, but normally I'd just skip to something else by then.
sorry but I try to correct this mistake when i see it ;)
my favorite similar pedantry is nauseous vs. nauseated :)
I haven't used 8pen's implementation (so I don't know how their version differs), but I imagine it has a similarly steep learning curve.
[1] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=288613 [2] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=354401.354778 [3] http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/perlin/demos/quikwriting.html [4] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1028014.1028031
I think if you get use to it it might have promise. Myself, I can type fast enough on a QWERTY layout (even on a touchscreen) that any of these fancier input methods just slow me down and annoy me.
This is basically Palm OS Graffiti, brought back from the dead and celebrated like innovation.
Heck, even the Apple Newton had it before the Palm OS.
It may be possible that the trees (not handwriting) are being missed for the forest (writing at the bottom of a touch screen) is nothing new.
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Anyone care to share the direct YouTube links?
The Gesture swiping built into 4.2 is hard to beat. Between the fast two handed operation with good correction and the freaky fast voice transcription, it's hard to want to deviate from the stock keyboard.
Honestly, the demo video makes it look painfully slow, even when he's doing a full demo sentence compared to what I'm used to.
Something that, as someone who uses their phone and tablet for valuable emails all the time, I don't have time for.
