Ask Slashdot: A 'Mavis Beacon' For Teaching Smartphone and Tablet Typing? 55
theodp writes: "Where have you gone, Mavis Beacon? A nation of smartphone and tablet typists could use your help. You've seen people type fast-and-furiously on smartphones and tablets, so you know it can be done, but how exactly do these one- and two-fingered wonders (YouTube video) manage to do so? Is it their reaction time? Technique? Both? Back in the day, touch-typing teachers showed kids the secrets to higher word-per-minute scores on their Smith Coronas. Later, typing tutor software got kids up-to-speed on PCs. So, with over 1 billion smartphones and 200 million or so tablets shipped in 2013, what are the best software and tutorials that teach mobile typing techniques? And what platform specific features — iOS, Android, WP8/Win8, BB — do you find make your mobile typing life a whole lot easier?"
Steam (Score:3, Informative)
"Where have you gone, Mavis Beacon?"
Steam
http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com]
I don't want to type faster (Score:4, Informative)
...at least not on my goddamn telephone. I don't know how to "thumb type" at all, and oddly, when I'm sitting on the subway and I look around to see all the people furiously hammering away on their phones, I'm not one of them.
I use Swype (which is irritating in its own way, due to flaky prediction), and it's just usable enough that I can reply to an important email/text, or look something up on the net/maps. If it's not important, it waits until I'm sitting in front of a monitor - or better still, slips off the agenda entirely.
By all means, improve predictive text / speech recognition / HCI whatever. But why in the hell would I waste my time acquiring a skill that's only useful for burying one's head in (further) neurotic withdrawal from physical reality? It's like learning Esperanto so more people can read your Facebook page.