IBM has developed Shark (Shorthand-Aided Rapid Keyboarding) ,an advanced pen-based shorthand method that allows users to input words into mobile devices by tracing them letter by letter on a virtual keyboard.
Instead of tapping independently on four virtual keys with a stylus to spell "word," for example, consumers would put the stylus on "w" and then carve a continuous trail all the way to "d." "What we are doing is creating a human-machine code," said Shumin Zhai, a research staff member at IBM Almaden Research Center, said during a presentation at the New Paradigms for Using Computers conference in Silicon Valley on Monday.
"It uses geometrical patterns to represent words." As an aside, he added, "We"re back to carving symbols on rocks." Users initially hunt for letters to write words, but the idea is that they fairly rapidly start to memorize the shape of common words and word components--and therefore, their dependence on visual guidance decreases. The computer assesses the user"s final pattern, interprets it as a word from its database and turns it into text on the screen.