Taps for Triple-Tapping

If wireless users had one wish, it would be to make handsets more user-friendly. SMS, games and other data applications aren't much fun when you have to triple-tap your way through them. Today, inputting e-mail addresses, text messages and credit-card numbers takes patience and lots of free time. However, a few companies have made technological inroads that will make navigation of wireless data less frustrating and more intuitive. Device interoperability, gesture recognition and an input alternative are all stacking up to provide relief soon.

Bye, Bye Triple-Tapping

The 12-button touchpad has proved a significant inhibitor to widespread use of data applications. Even simple tasks such as SMS have required that wireless data users input long and time-consuming key sequences.

However, Digit Wireless may have solved the input snag. Fastap Keypad, billed as the world's smallest alphanumeric computer interface, allows quick and easy entry of numbers, letters and punctuation without triple tapping.

Chris Hare, Digit Wireless vice president of business development, calls Fastap a “hills and valleys” concept.

“Imagine two keyboards superimposed over the top of one another … so you've got an undulating series of keys,” he said. “The hills represent letters and the valleys represent numbers and some punctuation. But the format is flexible enough that those hills and valleys could represent anything.”

The keypad uses a matrix of raised and lowered keys that provide the finger or thumb ample space to access any character with a single press. Fastap's ergonomic design features a Qwerty keyboard about one-third the size of a credit card. Full-sized keys make for easy use, and 1-touch access to punctuation and specialty characters streamline advanced applications. The Fastap interface is platform-independent and requires only 2k of memory.

Digit Wireless is talking with handset manufacturers, carriers and application providers about licensing Fastap to replace traditional 12-key touchpads. The technology can be used on any device that requires a pocket-sized interface for data entry including wireless phones, 2-way pagers, PDAs, GPS devices, MP3 players and games.

The year-old company is testing several prototypes with manufacturers, including Audiovox.

“Initially, this will begin to make all applications that currently exist easier,” he said. “So instead of triple-tapping your way through other methods of data entry, you'll be able to use existing applications the same way you would as if it were on your desktop.”

Hare also expects Fastap to encourage increased use of SMS and m-commerce applications by making them simpler to use.

“Discussions with user groups suggest that if you have a phone capable of using text messaging and you don't use it, one of the reasons is because it's difficult to triple tap or use data entry,” Hare said. “If it's as easy to type a message as dial a phone number, then a lot more people will be doing it.”

Analysts agree that improved text input methods would increase SMS traffic by 25% per user. In the year 2000, users sent more than 100 billion SMS messages. By 2003, analysts expect users to send that many every month. Applying the estimated 25% Fastap boost to SMS revenues of 7-18 cents per message, the potential revenue increase for carriers could be as high as $54 billion per year.

Fastap also can designate a button for 1-touch access to Yahoo! or MSN from a wireless phone. This could become another revenue source as carriers set up agreements to provide additional services.

“We've had comments from carriers to suggest this may become a de facto standard,” he said. “The days of the 12-key keypad are numbered.”

A Flick of the Wrist

Imagine calling home with a flick of your wrist, or scrolling through your wireless phone's menu by simply tilting the device.

While still in the development stage, Caveo Technology's gesture-recognition software and hardware technology enables the use of simple gestures, taps and flicks of the wrist for navigation, scrolling and input commands in wireless devices.

Caveo's technology uses an inertial motion sensor, the ADXL202, manufactured by Analog Devices. This type of sensor, also found in earthquake-detection applications, airbag deployment and missile guidance systems, senses its own motion and the motion of any object it's attached to. Motion data collected by sensors includes signal and noise information. Caveo uses a range of techniques to process this motion information.

According to David Lee, Caveo Technology founder and CEO, these “motion algorithms” are building blocks for smart motion-sensing systems.

The technological leap here is to use semiconductor processes that can make small geometries and apply them to making not only stationary elements (electronic components) but to making things that can actually move under influence of gravity or motion.

“That's what the AD accelerometer is and does,” Lee said. “It allows you to have very sensitive and accurate measurements of motion in a tiny (chip).”

When this chip is added to wireless devices, it enables users to turn a phone on or off, authenticate, scroll, select functions, adjust contrast and possibly even play games using simple motions.

In hand-held devices, Lee said, Caveo's gesture-based navigation system will be based on direct integration of the motion sensor to the device's motherboard, allowing for direct communication and control via the CPU.

This holds appeal for OEMs because they are interested in removing the large, often expensive trac-ball-type buttons used for scrolling functionality in order to increase screen sizes.

The biggest hurdle for gesture-recognition technology has been how to recognize the right type of motion. Caveo's solution to this problem stems from its anti-theft motion authentication technology for laptops.

For laptops, the company developed a “motion password” functionality by which users teach their laptop a specific, unique motion sequence that the machine uses to authenticate the user. “When I pick up my laptop, I execute a few subtle rotations that arm and disarm it,” Lee said. “That took a lot of technology because you've got to know how to be able to recognize when it's an intentional motion that the user's giving, separate from other environmental conditions.”

Motion authentication also holds potential for PDAs and hand-helds. With a Pocket PC, for example, you could use a subtle motion that allows you to move the cursor around, select program applications and then scroll up or down just by tilting the device. But this requires small motions, Lee said, adding that devices shouldn't be tilted more than 5 to 7 degrees.

Caveo has developed the code for gesture-recognition technology but isn't running any beta tests yet. Gesture recognition might make its way to the market by the end of 2002, and Lee said its possibilities are limitless.

Do you speak iPAQ?

Enabling different devices to “talk” to one another is one thing. But understanding one another is an impossible feat right now. However, successful Bluetooth implementations would approach this goal.

“The fact there are differences between devices and implementations to the protocol stacks,” said Steve Williams, Impart Technologies vice president of marketing. “Simply having a Bluetooth logo on two devices doesn't mean they'll interoperate.”

Impart Technologies has developed software that will enable disparate devices to do just this, using a variety of connection protocols including 802.11, Bluetooth and infrared (IrDA). The Embedded Communications Broker(ECB) software sits on only one device, discovers the type of device it wants to communicate with, builds a profile of that device on the fly, communicates and then disassembles the profile.

To enable devices to interact transparently, the ECB provides a thin abstraction layer between the source application on one device and the target application on another. Through this layer, devices can understand each other.

No companion software is required on the receiving device, creating interoperability without the burden of installing software on every device. The ECB classifies the device with which it wants to communicate, assembles the components, resulting in minimal impact to device resources. Components used in device discovery can be stored for future use or eliminated after a transaction. As new devices, operating systems and protocols are introduced, the ECB updates itself to support them in real time.

The protocol- and platform-independent ECB creates opportunities for myriad wireless applications for personal and corporate information systems, gaming and entertainment, messaging, networking, telematics and home networking, all centered on the ability for devices to communicate, regardless of device type, operating system or application data format. For carriers, the solution could reduce network traffic. Instead of tying up the network, users could send simple SMS messages directly to other devices.

“We've removed a piece of the cost structure for the carrier in that scenario to keep revenue flowing,” Williams said. “It would reduce traffic on the network and encourage the usage behavior of the messaging system, so people would use it more frequently.”