EDITED 2 (24/7/2012) Heh heh heh hee hee hu hu ha ha (joker's laugh)
So last week I thought of an idea about the BlindType, but then I immediately realized that it has been done about 2 years ago.
But now I am thinking of implementing the blind type technique into my finger tracking kinect application. So it would make typing in the air possible, without good accuracy.
Please dont KS me anymore, let me SCIE this time!
EDITED: After I blogged about this idea, then I start google about it if anyone has done it before.
And... yup, there is existing application doing the same thing, and it seems very good.
So... I am outdated... for about 2 years...
Please refer to the link
http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/08/08/blindtype-keyboard-to-come-to-android-type-anywhere-on-your-phones-screen-even-with-no-keyboard-present/
But blindtype never gets to the public, it was bought by google, and google has been implement the technology in android 4.0
However there is still 1 thing google didnt implemented, the main power of blindtype, which is type anywhere on the screen.
Typing on smartphone is hard, most of people rely on predictive keyboard (T9, swype, swiftkey)
On smartphone, I personally favor swype although bunch of people say swiftkey tends to be very intelligent over time, and it can predict most of your next words.
But well, on tablet, swype isn't a very good input method. As you need to swype through a very long distance, it is very tired..
While the screen on tablet is bigger, people tends to go back to the original = typing on the on-screen keyboard. Because the area is big enough, and each key is individual enough, it can simulate the typing on keyboard action.
However, it is not true at all. The experience is still very much different from typing on a real keyboard, it is not even close! I am not saying about the tactile feedback here, nor the hand feeling.
User still need to look at the on screen keyboard on the tablet when they are typing, it makes the typing experience sucks, and it slows down the WPM. I am not going to explain deeply on the experience here.
When we type on a real keyboard, we don't need to see the keyboard at all. (for average users and above, not for noobs)
What if we can simulate the same experience on tablet?
So my idea is:
We can type randomly on the tablet screen (I mean anywhere), the same way we did on normal keyboard.
Then a software will capture all the points, and predict the word we type.
Don't understand? Let see some picture.
For example, when u type "l o v e r", as shown in next picture
your finger land on the location by sequence(highlighted in red color)
we assume that the location where your finger lands, will be almost the same for a particular alphabet, everytime
lets remove the keyboard background and see what we have there
So we got some unknown locations, in sequence
and some relative distance for each sequence
And we also have relative distance for next n-th sequence for key 1 correspond to key 3, key 4 or key 5
With so much information gathered, we can predict the word we just typed
When u start pressing first key, the software recognize the location, then when u type the second key, the software recognize the location, and calculate the relative distance to the first point. And so on...
finally it predict a word based on the collected points.
Remembered when I say you can type on anywhere on the tablet screen?
let see some example if it is possible
versus
Even if you type anywhere, the relative distance, and sequence will be ALMOST the same for each particular word. So, it doesn't matter. The intelligent software will predict your word by calculating the location, relative distance, and etc.
So I can say it is very possible and feasible.
Since swype and swiftkey is so clever, it must be possible.
swype can predict a word based on the keys u swipe through, while swifkey can predict your word even you only type the 1st alphabet, and even predict ur next word.
Combining swype, swiftkey with my idea, then it makes perfect typing experience on tablet!
Above was just my little tiny idea.
I cannot make it possible due to lack of skills especially in text prediction.
