A Partner Programme has been put in place by Textra Technology Limited for the increasing number of organisations expressing interest in their innovative products.
A spokesman stated “This initiative will enable us to be better placed to give the level of support and assistance that third parties require and to help us to develop together and move forward in partnership”.
There are three categories of partnership. A special Educational Partner category is designed to assist academia and is targeted at students, teaching staff and researchers in HCI or other appropriate disciplines at recognised educational establishments. The Licensed Partner category is for organisations wishing to proceed to develop and incorporate the technologies into their own products. And finally there is the Affiliate Partner category for those others who are not yet at the Licensed Partner stage.
For all categories membership puts partners on the inside track bringing technical papers, research documents, testing results, market survey analysis, and other material that would otherwise remain confidential. Other benefits include direct support, free software, access to working prototypes etc.
The Design Institute at Coventry University has had unprecedented early access to Textra Technology’s revolutionary Textra Keypad concept. The keypad looks like changing texting forever by banishing the multiple tapping way of entering letters into mobile phones.
The staff and students at the Design Institute cover a wide range of projects and briefs both internally and in support of businesses throughout the Midlands region.
In this case they were given a free hand to create design concepts as to how the new Textra Keypad might look.
"The enthusiasm and ingenuity of these young designers was truly astonishing." stated a spokesperson.
A new age is dawning for text messaging. In the past decade mobile phone texting has grown to a worldwide phenomenon of huge proportions with literally billions of messages sent. With a camera phone I can add pictures to my messages (and with 3G phones even videos). But one key aspect (and I use the word key deliberately) has remained grimly stubborn and refused to progress forward. And that is the phone keypad. Using a layout dating from I know not when I either have to wear down my thumbs by triple tapping or stare at the screen to make sure I don’t miss any of T9’s humorous slip ups (shaking motor in kept) (sorry that was: picking nouns in jest).
But now a British company called Textra Technology have invented a new keypad. It has the same size keys and number layout as your regular phone, and the letters are still arranged alphabetically but by an ingenious introduction of four additional keys now each letter can be obtained by a single tap. If I press a letter my thumb ends up pushing two or three buttons at the same time resulting in the letter I wanted.
The extra buttons stick out a little above the regular number buttons and so are easy to feel for. If you think of these as the main or home positions for your thumbs then the letters are arranged around them and its easy to sort of smudge you thumb to get the letter you want – believe me it is easy. Textra Technology have a Flash demo on their web site www.textratech.com so you can have a go yourself and see what I mean.
Also, and I suspect somewhat serendipitously, the vowels end up all neatly lined up down the left hand side of the keypad. These, it is claimed, acting as signposts help even the complete novice to touch type (albeit slowly at first) on the basis that everyone knows the alphabet and the vowels – which I guess is true for most txtrs!
A survey of attitudes to text messaging was conducted across the UK by polling organisation YouGov in July 2004. More than two thousand adult texters were asked what they thought about how they entered text messages into their mobile phone.
When asked about the traditional multiple tapping method of data entry those thinking it fast were overwhelmed by those who disagreed by a factor of ten.
When asked what they thought if there could be a method where letters were available by single tapping, provided this didn’t mean smaller keys or a bigger keyboard, then 78% thought this would be a better (excluding 15% don’t knows).
Some thought that such a solution was impossible to find (one thought it a late April Fool) but most comments were enthusiastic.
