(Written via my TC1100 using the 1st gen TIP, which do has Block Recognizer)

On a recent trip, we were wandering aimlessly through a business park searching for a Mexican restaurant. The driver admitted that she only vaguely knew its location.

So I whipped out my iPhone and said “Hacienda near me”. (a restaurant name I couldn’t spell)

The car laughed.

Moments later I was able to direct the driver to the restaurant.

The car murmured “Cool”.

Speech when it works well can be fast and not so embarrassing. Still I don’t want to dictate my every email, IM, and google search to the world around me. Even future flawless speech input will still need a more private backup method.

James–I imagine you’ve tried ritepen; it allows the user to write anywhere onscreen. I have the older version, and it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good for writing longer text passages.

I really do insist that the 10″ screen size is going to be optimal. It is professional size, akin to my larger Moleskines. With a bluetooth headset it allows for notes. It is useful for browsing. In a vertical mode, the thumbs are well positioned. The only reason I would want a larger tablet is for sketching, but I am not the average consumer or professional.

All of the above are coming around one day soon, so hopefully we’ll have our choice!

I do see some hope. Apple has been good at telling us what we want. Maybe they will do that again. Then we’ll learn and the problem will be solved. Palm told us to learn graffiti and nobody cared. Maybe when Jobs will tell us to learn, learn we will.

This could be one solution:

I’m fine with a virtual keyboard for _light_ input. Especially if the screen is big enough that I have a reasonable amount of the app still visible even when I’m using a full thumb sized keyboard. Imagine a 9″ Android Tablet, in portrait mode, with ConnectBot at the top, and a virtual keyboard at the bottom. I should have pretty close to a full 80×24 terminal visible in that use case.

For heavy typing, I have (in my gadget bag) a Matthias folding USB keyboard (no need to worry about connections or batteries, like with my older iGo folding Bluetooth keyboard). It’s full size, and quite usable. It just requires that I have a table, and that the device has USB ports. Luckily, the Entourage eDGe looks like it’ll work with this. That, and a video out port, gives you KVM support, as well.

One thing I think would greatly help Android (or any tablet OS) is the “Swipe” input method. You basically have an on screen qwerty keyboard, but instead of “tapping” the keys, you sort of play “connect the dots” with them. To type “send”, you put your finger down on the s, keep it down while moving to the e, keep it down while moving to the n, and keep it down while moving to the d. Then you raise your finger (for the first time since putting it down on the s). That would help a lot.

I don’t know how well Apple’s inkwell technology has improved upon (or even just preserved) the Newton handwriting recognition, but that’s another one that might be useful. But, for just taking notes, simple e-ink writing with a stylus, into a graphical format (no automated analysis of what you wrote) would be “useful enough”. You’d just have to go back and transcribe it yourself (with your USB keyboard, perhaps while at a KVM switch), later.

I personally never really liked Grafiti on the Palm. I know some people liked it a lot … and maybe it’s just that I didn’t use it enough to get used to it. But, yeah, I wouldn’t be attracted to that as an imposed solution. I also never use the Grafiti-like input on Maemo.

So, there you go: for the foreseeable future, on an Android tablet, I plan on using the on-screen/virtual keyboards for light text input. Then I plan to use a USB keyboard of some sort for heavier text input. If I get the Entourage eDGe, I could also use the e-paper screen for “written notes” that I transcribe via keyboard, later. Last, I’d find it useful to see the “swipe input” method available for the Android virtual keyboards :-}