On April Fool’s Day, Sogou declared they would release an evolutional
typing product called Typany, which means you can type “anything anytime
anywhere”. By wearing this armband, users can use any surface they get to type.
Although it may sounds too good to be true, there are still some functions that
have been realized, which makes Typany more like a typing product vision in the
future than just an April Fool’s joke.
1. Fleksy—Massive Metadata Computing and Autocorrections
“Fleksy is an application that replaces your device’s
on-screen keyboard.” It has received a number of rewards since first released
in July, 2012. Now it is an app that available both in App Store and Google
Play with the price of $3.99. What it really helps is you don’t have to look at
your keyboard while typing anymore. Users can type based on their memory and imagination
while Fleksy predicts and selects the exact word you typed. It doesn’t really
care what you’ve typed, but where you typed. Even if for the blind, the typing
can easily get 100% correct. “With 114% larger effective typing area, use
traditional buttons like the spacebar or master Fleksy’s unique gesture system
to space, delete, capitalize and punctuate.” And the keyboard below can be
totally invisible, giving you the freedom of the whole screen.
2. SensorMonitor—Change any Surface into a Keyboard
It will be awesome if the users can type
anywhere they want—no matter on a bed sheet, their arms, desks, or anywhere you
can imagine. The hard part for this is to catch the three-dimensional
coordinate sequence and reflecting this correctly to the typing results. Maybe
three-dimension is still a dream, but two-dimension has become true.
Vibrative Virtual Keyboard developed by
Florian Krautli can realize two-dimensional typing. This is an app that can
turn any surface into an iPhone keyboard. It “uses an iPhone’s accelerometer to
sense the location of a tap on any surface and translate it into typed letters
on a keyboard”.”Technically, the phone’s accelerometer is measuring vibrations
on that surface. Krautli’s software maps those vibrations to a point of origin
on the table. And when the phone can “see” where you’re tapping, you can have a
QWERTY keyboard on any tabletop.” However, this app can’t guarantee accuracy
because the recognition is still not perfect, which means it needs a kind of
spell checker. Also, this app is not available for download now.
3. MYO Armband—Two-dimension to Three-dimension, Tactile
Feedback Solution
The Myo is developed by a Canadian startup called
Thalmic Labs. And it gives a new solution for gesture sensing—sensing the
muscles. It can get your forearm gesture sensed as well as relative motion
sensed. Eight EMG sensors built around Myo can pick up on the electrical
potential generated by muscle cells, then with the Myo on your forearm, “the sensors
can read all of the muscles that control your fingers, letting them spy on
finger position as well as grip strength.” Now Myo offers wireless
compatibility with PCs, Macs, iOS, and Android. And the price of a pre-order is
$149.
Based on all the functions that have been realized, what Typany said may become true in the future instead of just being an April Fool’s joke.
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