TOUCH TYPING IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM
By Stewart S. Miller | Special to Today's Local News
When Henry Mill took out the first recorded patent in England for the typewriter in 1714, little did he know where his invention would lead in the computer age. The heart and soul of the typewriter is the keyboard - the user interface that connects human to machine. A traditional keyboard has an individual switch for each key. Mechanical keyboards have proven most beneficial for touch typists, as the user can feel a standard membrane "springiness" for each key. But, as time has shaped our world in new ways, so has it reshaped the traditional keyboard to meet the challenge of new technologies.
In an age when writers like me become the poster child of "carpal tunnel syndrome," new keyboards had to be invented so theoretically you could type and not move your fingers far enough to hurt you. Enter the "chorded" keyboard, where, instead of using one key for each character, the user presses multiple-key combinations similar to playing chords on a piano.
This technology has been available for several years, but few people knew about it because such special training was needed in order to use it. The whole benefit of such a device is that your fingers don't need to move as far, it saves time, and you can even type on it faster than a standard keyboard.
Enter the device called the iFrog, from a company called FrogPad (www.frogpad.com), an excellent device that I have purchased. This is a compact keyboard much like the chorded keyboard described above but with a far easier learning curve.
Unlike chording keyboards, where most of the time you need to press multiple keys just to type one character, on the iFrog you never press more than two keys at one time (similar to pressing the shift on your existing computer keyboard.)
This device is not much bigger than a handheld PDA, but has the same size keys as a regular keyboard. It offers very simple key combinations that allow you to type any character that you would find on any full-size keyboard (even the Apple key on a Macintosh or the CTRL and ALT keys on a PC).
The FrogPad started as a standard USB device, but the company has come out with a very slick product called the "Bluetooth iFrog" that connects wirelessly with either your computer or your Bluetooth-enabled PDA. This nice little wireless device charges up and is liberating because you can type with one hand without any wires!
The keys are specially configured in different versions for either your right or left had so you can comfortably get into the rhythm of typing with the most commonly typed characters at your fingertips.
The basic layout of the keys is optimized for quick adaptation even if you are a standard QWERTY typist. The key layout is optimized around both the most frequently used keys and the strongest fingers of the hand. I was able to get comfortable using this device after only one evening. Instead of hurting my wrists by typing on a standard keyboard and then shifting my right hand to the mouse, instead I put my iFrog on my easy chair under my left hand and a Bluetooth mouse under my right - with my laptop directly in front of me I could easily perform all operations on my computer without flexing my wrists.
If you are a graphic artist or just someone looking for an easier way to type, you will find the iFrog to be most beneficial. I came from a background where I once used a traditional chorded keyboard—and believe me it was enormously difficult to learn how to type using one of those devices even though I know how to play a piano. At least with iFrog, it looks like a keyboard and all the letters and characters are designated on each button so even if you use the old “hunt and peck” method of typing—you can still make the “leap” to FrogPad seamlessly.
Stewart S. Miller is a Carlsbad-based computer author, consultant and analyst. For further information, e-mail him at Miller@ITMaven.NET.
