
8pen - A new way to write on mobile devices - GabeN
http://www.8pen.com/
======
alexh
I actually forced myself to learn to use this. It seemed cool, and potentially
very powerful, so I used it exclusively for 6 months on my phone.

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.

~~~
jaggederest
I also used it extensively. There are options to make the center spot _much_
smaller that make it far easier to type with.

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)

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artursapek
Cache, since it's down:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.8p...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.8pen.com/watch)

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?

~~~
hayksaakian
> genius

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?)

~~~
artursapek
I think this because I really love geometry and I think the motions that
result from this system are beautiful and natural-looking, even if hard to
execute on a small touch screen phone.

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millerc
Tutorial video and app download at this address:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eightpen.a...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eightpen.android.eightpen)

Definitely won't take the place still in my heart for Graffiti (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)> ).

~~~
j45
Still write some letters accidentally in Grafitti sometimes.

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

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rdl
Interesting idea.

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.

~~~
nakedrobot2
minor pedantic note: I believe you meant that the first 15 seconds made you
"uninterested", not "disinterested". "disinterested" means "impartial and
objective" while "uninterested" means "not interested".

sorry but I try to correct this mistake when i see it ;)

~~~
rdl
thanks! (I was sort of aware of the distinction, but it was really late)

my favorite similar pedantry is nauseous vs. nauseated :)

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btn
This appears to be a variant of a technique known in the research literature
as _Quikwriting_ [1] (a type of _FlowMenu_ [2]), which you can still try
online [3]. There hasn't been much in the way of evaluation of Quickwriting,
but one study found people's initial performance was around 4WPM, increasing
to 16WPM after five hours of practice [4].

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>

~~~
rasengan0
Agreed, I demo'd Dr. Perlin's Quikwriting for the Palm which back in the day
of capacitive touch, one had to put a plastic film template overlay of the
glyphs. While novel and innovative, it was unfortunately overshadowed by other
keyboarding methods, fitaly et al. That said, 8open efforts while admirable
need to be tested against stock 4.2 swipe with autocorrection which i found
most satisfactory above all other methods. ymmv

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mcbridematt
8pen has been around for a while, I remember using it in 2010.

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.

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franklinho
I tried this a while ago and could never get used to it. It asks for too much
learning to be widely adopted. (Think dvorak)

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phinnaeus
I tried it with an open mind for about a week when it first came out a while
ago. That was the end of it for me.

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j45
Lol, this is hilarious.

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.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_%28Palm_OS%29>

~~~
drivebyacct2
Did we watch the same video, or am I missing how this is terribly similar to
Graffiti?

~~~
failrate
I agree with the graffiti comparison. I think Graffiti is preferable, also,
because its characters seem to be faster to draw than the 8pen (to this day, I
still write my capital Es like I'm using my Palm Zire).

~~~
j45
Haha, I thought I was the only one who accidentally writes letters Grafitti
style.

I was the worst at writing k's and x's weird.

At the time it was the fastest way to enter data, until the Treos and the
original touchscreen/physical keyboard combos came out.

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glennos
Recoding the alphabet for input reminds me of this. Shame the page is always
overloaded! <https://mail.google.com/mail/help/promos/tap/index.html>

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dhaivatpandya
I think this would be like relearning touch typing. I don't think the time
investment would be worth it. And, thumbs are not dexterous enough to make
large words through this system without it getting annoying very quickly.

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dragonbonheur
This is interesting but complicated. They might have more commercial success
by copyrighting their keyboard layout and licensing it. The most confusing
aspect is the number of turns needed to indicate amplitude.

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Tyr42
I tried it for a few weeks. What was a real downside is that the tip of my
finger got sorta friction burn from swiping too much. Maybe it was my cheapo
phone screen, but it just wasn't working that well.

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melvinram
Overview video since site is down:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=99vsUF4NuLk)

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GabeN
What do people think of this? I feel like it's already made defunct by other
options such as the SwiftKey Flow Beta. Not to mention the need to learn a
whole new style of writing.

~~~
forgotlogin
its aweful...dont even bother unless its free

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donniezazen
After trying most Android keyboard, I think the best and easiest way to write
is using progressively-learning-predictive-technique like in SwiftKey.

~~~
j45
I switched to Swiftkey a while back and like it. The swiftkey flow keyboard is
the best of both worlds, swype and the swiftkey.

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willlll
I'm just getting "This application is temporarily over its serving quota.
Please try again later." on all of the links.

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wiradikusuma
Error

Over Quota

This application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again
later.

Anyone care to share the direct YouTube links?

~~~
uladzislau
Here you go <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99vsUF4NuLk>

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Kluny
Guys, you killed their site.

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drivebyacct2
I remember using this when Swype was just new. It is very unwieldy and I tried
it for a week or two of heavy frustration.

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.

~~~
Kiro
I thought Swype and Gesture swiping were more or less the same. What's the
difference?

~~~
drivebyacct2
Swype only lets some users via a "beta program" use the app. It has a
cumbersome installer that never works on the first try. I like the style of
the stock keyboard as well as a few of the layout nags. Finally, the Google
keyboard also includes fast access to the text-to-voice app. That and I think
the algorithm is flatly better than swype. (Swype was always more of a
gimmick, especially after Gingerbread when the stock keyboard got a big
upgrade. Gesture with the Google keyboard is something I use 75% of the time
I'm typing)

~~~
mynameisvlad
I'm pretty sure he meant functionality-wise. As in, same sorts of gestures and
such.

Swype is available for everyone, without registration: <http://beta.swype.com>
It may have been that you needed to be approved before. But not anymore.

