Filed under: Fun, Text, Features, Windows, Macintosh, Windows Mobile, Productivity, Open Source, Mobile Minute
Dasher - The psychedelic keyboard alternative
by Ian Smith Sep 7th 2007 at 5:00PM
Imagine you are driving across the state of Kansas, passing an endless quilt of farm fields filled with harvest ready corn. Imagine that you are dreaming and unrestrained by roads and fences. Entering one of the fields, a whole patchwork of color opens up before you. As you go on these patches get larger until they are each acres wide and as big as the field you just entered. It's as if you have passed into another Kansas hidden within the first.
Entering another field you discover that it too opens up to yet more fields. This goes on and on until you can't remember the real Kansas at all and can only look to next row of fields and the gallery of smaller worlds appearing within them.
Psychedelic? No. This is just what is like to use Dasher.
Dasher is a an experimental text entry technology for mobile devices. It also works on Windows and Mac so you can try it out on your desktop too. Dasher uses a predictive text engine and a unique interface to let you enter characters and words by using your mouse or stylus, without the need to hunt and peck letters. The interface provides a set of symbols on the right of the screen. Clicking your mouse and pointing at a symbol zooms in. As you get closer more letters and symbols appear within the color block that holds your target.
For example, when you start up Dasher and drag toward the letter M you'll see the letter Y slowly appear and get larger within the blue block. Within the Y block you'll see a growing space character. Point at the space characters and you'll race or swim your way through until you've spelled the word "My", which gets entered into the text input at the top of the screen. By the time you have your space you'll be able to see the word "name" within that box and by pointing to the E you can quickly enter that word. Then find the letters to spell out your name, add a period, and you have your first sentence. All with one click of the mouse.
The software is beta, but is well worth the short download just to play with. It almost qualifies as a time-waster for the simple reason that it is addicting to race your way through words and sentences and see what you can easily and quickly construct.
Looking for a fun challenge? See how quickly you can spell out the famous phrase "all your base are belong to us" without making mistakes.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andrisi said 5:44PM on 9-13-2007
This is an old idea, and I think it was developed as a text input method for people living with disabilities.
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