Neowin.net - Microsoft Scientists Pushing Keyboard Into the Past

Microsoft Scientists Pushing Keyboard Into the Past

Posted by malebolgia on 03 May 2006 - 22:23 · 15 comments & 11577 views

How can you find information about Condoleezza Rice on the Internet? Type in "2*#7423".

That is if you have a copy of a prototype program from Microsoft Research currently named The Wild Thing. The application, for cell phones and handhelds, essentially lets consumers conduct queries with abbreviations and truncated spellings of words, said its developer Bo Thiesson.

The query TR SF turns up Thai restaurants in San Francisco, complete with search results grouped under a header for local Thai restaurants. It also turns up Tower Records and The Stinking Rose, a local restaurant, but punching in those four letters took less time on a handheld keyboard that the full formal query on a cell phone keypad.

News source: C|Net News.com

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#1 Posted by vlsi0n on 03 May 2006 - 22:49: Very interesting, I wonder how useful that would prove to be?

#2 Posted by HEKTIK on 03 May 2006 - 23:03: Agreed is does sound quite interesting but then most people I know can text (on a phone with predictive text/T9) just as fast, if not faster, than they can type on a proper keyboard

Hmmmm, now I've said that I wouldn't mind trying some sort of phone keypad on my PC to see how my texting speed compares to my typing

#3 Posted by mihir on 04 May 2006 - 00:04: doesnt sound any different to googles wap service to me.

#4 Posted by netizen on 04 May 2006 - 00:21: What's faster, typing a proper search query or scrolling through lots of completely irrelevant results on a small screen? Funny how they've tried to spin being less precise into a positive thing!

Oh, and that headline is ****-poor journalism, but hey it's C|Net.

Last edited by netizen on 04 May 2006 - 00:28

#5 Posted by theyarecomingforyou on 04 May 2006 - 00:29: I can't see this catching on in the mainstream when I come across so many people that can barely use a regular keyboard... hunting and pecking is still a popular pastime.

(1 reply) #6 Posted by PeteyPal on 04 May 2006 - 00:39: I think it's a step back to the DOS days when you needed to know all the commands to use it. I can't really see it taking off.

By the time you had looked up the command you needed for whatever you were looking for, you might as well have written out the whole search term.

(4 replies) #7 Posted by Netrack on 04 May 2006 - 01:22: What if i was in conneticut looking for a calvin kline store? Would i Type in CO.CK? I bet that would produce excellent results..

(1 reply) #8 Posted by Dirtie on 04 May 2006 - 03:25: What if I want Secret Elephant Xylophones?

#9 Posted by rlepage on 04 May 2006 - 22:36: 1- return results for
A. PGAD
to
C. SICF

2- sort out which has more results and a better structure.
3- return results
4- call the server-side T9 function (word guessing) an improvement
5- ???
6- profit!

what did you expect. that's f*king not an improvement, it's a channel for laziness. you don't even have to use the T9 cellphone function now. sucker. (I have a Samsung Cell, and the word guess/completion feature is called T9). I didn't expect less from microsoft. or shoud I say more. cause that's REAL low. attention whores.

I'll admit the word guessing from single letters is a little kewl. but that's hardly anything big : letter correlation in a word database, semantic check, relation check between two word groups.

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