Hasta La Gadget!

We’re living in an age of multiple connected screens, where even our media-savvy televisions demand some occasional typing to search for a videogame, TV show or Netflix rental. Problem is, typing (more like hunting and pecking) with a game controller or remote control is a pain in the butt — and that’s the world into which the TiVo Slide is being born.

The TiVo on-screen software keyboard has been semi-affectionately dubbed “the Ouija Board input” from the way users slid and hovered the remote over each letter to search for titles. As TiVo added more and more text-dependent features, Ouija-hovering got more and more obnoxious. With recent software updates, Premiere and Series 3 users can use a USB keyboard or mouse, or a wireless device with a USB Bluetooth dongle. (That’s actually how the Slide connects.) But for one-stop remote/keyboard shopping, the Slide is your guy.

It solves a few technical problems that have haunted keyboard-style remotes for years. The slide interface is one: We’ve gotten so used to handheld devices that almost nobody wants to use a keyboard for everything. The bigger deal may be Bluetooth, which, among other nice things, performs the essential task of letting you use the keyboard sideways. It also lights up in the dark — there are other TiVo remotes that do this, but typing text with your thumbs makes this feature pretty much essential.

Yes — you have to type with your thumbs. If you’ve used a smartphone hardware keyboard like most BlackBerries’ (or a slide-out like the Droid’s), this is familiar stuff. If your typing skills are optimized for a keyboard, or you’re not much of a typist to begin with, it’ll take some getting used to.

It’s surprising, actually, that we’re not seeing more innovation and experimentation in alt-keyboard devices. There’s nothing sacrosanct about the QWERTY keyboard layout other than that it’s what most typists in the English-speaking world have come to expect. Most people know that it appeared on early Remington typewriters because it kept the keys from clashing; if a rifle maker knew anything, it was precision-manufacturing a device not to jam.

But whether it’s hardware or software, we don’t have to worry about keys jamming on keyboards now. And yet, even swiping, chording and hovering software keyboards use the QWERTY layout. Why not try an alphabetic keyboard — something designed for people who don’t do much typing at all? The last time I checked, relatively few people with TVs sit in front of a computer most of the day.

Or, if you’re targeting experts and speed freaks, why not try a version of the Dvorak layout?

Dvorak is an alternative keyboard configuration patented in 1932 and named for its inventor, August Dvorak. If QWERTY is the MS Windows of keyboards, Dvorak is the Mac. What its adherents lack in numbers, they make up in devotion. In “Seven Reasons to Switch to the Dvorak Keyboard layout,” Red Tani of WorkAwesome makes a good case:

In QWERTY, only 32 percent of keystrokes are on the home row. Which means most of the time, typists’ fingers are either reaching up for the top row (52 percent) or down for the bottom row (16 percent). So not only does QWERTY do nothing for typists, it actually hinders them.

Dvorak further increases typing speed by placing all vowels on the left side of the home row, and the most commonly used consonants on the right side. This guarantees that most of your strokes alternate between a finger on your right hand (consonant) and a finger on your left (vowel). Alternating between fingers from either hand is faster — just imagine texting with one hand or drumming with one stick.

On a tiny mobile device, DVORAK could be comparatively even faster. More comfortable, too.

QWERTY beat out DVORAK because typists who’d learned the first were faster and more accurate using that layout than on the second. It’s a classic example of what economists and other social scientists call path-dependence and increasing returns: An inferior technology can beat a superior one if it’s adopted early and widely enough to lock out the competition.

So maybe somewhere out there is a new kind of phone/remote controller-sized keyboard that blows the QWERTY keyboard away. The trouble is, most of us would be better off typing with something else, if they were giving superior machines away. The new TiVo remote acknowledges that this is the world we live in.

See Also:

• The TiVo Box is Dead, Long Live TiVo
• TiVo Premiere: Blockbuster, Netflix, Amazon on Your TV
• TiVo Redesigns Search Function, Wants to be the ‘Google of TV’
• IR Dongle Turns iPhone into Ugly Universal Remote

Photos: TiVo.com, Wikipedia

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