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Miss Jacques’ Typing ClassThe most useful class I ever took in high school was the two years of “typing” with Miss Jacques during the late 1970s. Typing I and Typing II. The skills I learned during those two years got me through a successful four-year enlistment in the Marine Corps and accelerated me through my management career in the business world during the 1990s and beyond. It almost didn’t happen though. On my first day in class, I was one of the only boys in a sea of girls and almost walked out in shame and embarrassment. Let me explain....

I hate to break it to parents who just sent their college-admission-minded progeny to the Tibetan Plateau to churn yak butter, but the smartest summer I ever spent was in secretarial school. This was back when I was 17, and it wasn’t grist for an essay about a transformative communion with people outside my clique. I wasn’t ripping the blinders from my eyes. I was typing — hour upon hour, day after day, with my shoulders back and my spine straight and my hands just so.

The largest-ever dataset on typing speeds and styles, based on 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 volunteers, finds that the fastest typists not only make fewer errors, but they often type the next key before the previous one has been released.  Crowdsourcing experiments that allow us to analyse how people interact with computers on a large scale are instrumental for identifying solution principles for the design of next-generation user interfaces.Per Ola Kristensson The data was collected by researchers from Aalto University in Finland and the University of Cambridge. Volunteers from over 200 countries took the typing test, which is freely available...

I am interested in getting a soft touch keyboard, with keys that are raised and separate enough that I do not easily hit the wrong key, which I am very prone to do, and wondered if any FReepers have any suggestions. Under 25.00 would be preferable. The problem is that my fingers have become increasingly stiff over the years, and so they do not move independently well or fast, or precisely hit what i want, and therefore I often hit the wrong key that i want to press, usually resulting in multiple typos in every sentence, thus making typing slow....

Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong. And yet people who use two spaces are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste.[snip] What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Some people admitted to...

The Obama campaign is mocking John McCain for not using a computer. From the AP story about the computer illiterate ad: "Our economy wouldn't survive without the Internet, and cyber-security continues to represent one our most serious national security threats," [Obama spokesman Dan] Pfeiffer said. "It's extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn't know how to send an e-mail." Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by "extraordinary." The reason he doesn't send email is that he can't use a keyboard because of the relentless beatings he received from the...

The 'qwerty' keyboard has been the subject of derision and verbal abuse ever since it made its first awkward appearance in 1872. The device has been largely neglected through the march of decades, even as computer components have advanced dramatically. Clearly keyboards need some imagination. A new software program that introduces a level of memory and intelligence to the lowly PC keyboard may just do that. The solution is called the Predictive Keyboard, and it's been developed by the WordLogic Corp. It's scheduled for commercial unveiling later this spring. The Predictive Keyboard can carry out a great many simple and...

MIAMI, FL. – If I hear one more Vietnam war story out of either presidential campaign I might just sit out this election. But the documents "60 Minutes" recently revealed as proof of President Bush's dereliction of military duty made me want to send my old Army sergeant out to Dan Rather's office. He had a way to deal with misguided trainees - he'd whack us with his "Ugly Stick." After high school I enlisted in the US Army, the only clear alternative for a teen without college plans in the late 1970s. I had two options: a rifleman posting...

At Greenwich Country Day, a prestigious Connecticut private school, computers have all but replaced pencil and paper. Typing instruction starts in second grade, and laptops are mandatory by seventh. Essays are typed, and often class notes are, too. As an adult in today's work world, you don't write anything," said Carol Maoz, head of the upper school (grades 7-9), adding she couldn't think of an occasion students would write out a longhand essay. "You type everything. There really is no need for proper handwriting." Maybe not indeed, even notes get passed in class via text message these days. But next...

Computer scientists have devised a method of "typing" without a keyboard using clever software that creates words and sentences using eye movements alone. Two Cambridge University researchers have shown that their invention does not result in eye-strain, is just as fast as conventional typing and results in fewer mistakes. David Ward and David MacKay, physicists in the university's Cavendish Laboratory, are making the software freely available in the hope that computer firms will use the idea, which promises to revolutionise technology for the disabled. In a study published today in the journal Nature, the scientists say that the system, which...