|
Mobile computing and gaming with palm PDA accessories! |
Learn one-handed touch typing with CyKey Plus keyboard! |
Connect your palm PDA to laptop, desktop, or keyboard! |
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
| Frequently Asked Questions |
| Why are there nine keys on the CyKey? |
| The 5 main keys on your CyKey Plus provide you with 31 chords, so two extra keys are needed to help generate the rest of the characters and controls. Since the CyKey Plus is designed to be a great right or left-handed keyboard, the two extra keys are mirrored on each side, giving a total of nine. Proper hand positioning is easy, natural, and adjustable for hand size. |
| What is the difference between the CyKey and the CyKey Plus? |
| The CyKey Plus Packages are the third generation CyKey product, and the fifth generation of Microwriting devices. The original CyKey was developed by Bellaire Electronics of England. It was bigger, only available for the right hand, and had larger piano style keys, which required more force to activate. The new CyKey was introduced in England, by Bellaire Electronics in 2002. The CyKey Plus Packages are a result of taking the new CyKey and adding important accessories to improve ease of learning and usability. |
| Wouldn’t perfected voice recognition be the best input method, and won’t it be here Any Day Now?* |
| Really good voice recognition will be great, though it might take longer to get to than many predict. However, voice input suffers from some serious usability problems. Noisy environments require serious processing power to make voice input work, meaning you need power hungry cpu’s that are expensive, both initially, and ongoing - for bulky battery replacement/recharging. Whenever privacy is required, voice is not a good option. Whenever quiet is needed (as we’re finding out with cellphones) voice is intrusive. While your mouth is otherwise engaged in talking or eating, voice does not work. Voice also is not very good for control applications. Do you want to have to talk, to change channels or volume on TV or radio? Would you want to drive your car by talking. Some things are just better with comfortable tactile controls and feedback. So, just as the typewriter did not replace the pen, which did not replace the pencil, voice input will become an important tool, but one of many, not the only one. In fact, chording can help make voice input a reality sooner, because voice recognition software requires users to "train it" by using the keyboard and mouse to manually correct recognition errors. The CyKey Plus allows faster and easier training of the speech recognition software. Using the CyKey Plus with wearable computers, you can get your voice software trained as fast as possible, without spending a lot of time trapped behind a desk.
*Many who bring up voice recognition seem to do so as an excuse to not need to learn something new. We understand this fear. Either you tried to learn the standard keyboard in the past, and failed, or you succeeded but only after a very long learning curve. The ridiculous design and difficulty of learning the QWERTY keyboard has given all keyboards a bad name. But really, learning Microwriting is easy (click here for proof)(place link to easy.html here) and we’ve even made it unnecessary anyway, with our popup help charts. |
| What's in it for gamers to learn and use the CyKey? |
| The CyKey can allow you to taunt your opponents, (in multiplayer gaming with chat) faster and more creatively, all while keeping one hand available to move and fire with your mouse or joystick. Also, you can cooperate with your team members, more flexibly, and faster than the traditional methods of using either limited macros, or tying up both hands with typing. |
| Do you work with Mac? Linux? |
| Yes, though we do not at the moment support all control options, but typing text is no problem. |
| Do you support the new PALM OS 5? |
| Not yet. We're working on it. Palm has radically changed the way the infrared module is controlled and this has become a problem for several vendors. If it can be solved in software, we will make the driver available as a free download. For now, this is a good reason NOT to buy any PDA with OS 5. For now, fortunately, many quality, advanced Palm OS PDA's running versions 3.x - 4.x are available. |
| What if I can't learn to microwrite on the CyKey? |
| All Cykey Plus Packages have a 30 day money back guarantee, which is enough time to learn it and teach it to 382 of your friends, neighbors and co-workers. But if you fritter away that month, without even trying microwriting, you can return it for a refund, if you can bear the shame. |
| What about your warranty? |
| One year, parts and labor. |
| Okay, I believe you can learn the alphabet in a half hour. What about the rest of the characters including punctuation and commands? How long before I'm fast? |
| The numbers, punctuation, and commands take a couple more hours generally, though you can use the help chart software to enable quick, convenient typing of all these characters while still learning them. After about twenty hours use, you should be up to handwriting speed (around 25 wpm). After another 20 hours you can expect getting to 30 - 40 words per minute. Generally, people top out at 35-55 words per minute, though with the abbreviation expansion feature of our Helper software, still higher speeds are possible. |