Researcher wants to kill QWERTY
 

An Australian researcher has spent 25 years coming up with an alternative to the QWERTY keyboard.

QWERTY, which has been around since 1878, is not good enough for Brisbane-based entrepreneur John Lambie who thinks that it is dysfunctional and believes that smartphones will be the transition point to kill it off.

Lambie is in the United States hawking his alternative design which he thinks is more efficient. It can be used with just one finger or to split itself in two to make typing easier with two thumbs.

Dubbed Dextr, the keyboard is in alphabetical order with the letters split over five rows instead of three. It can be flipped for easier use by left handed people.

Lambie told Stuff that he was inspired by a lecturer who had severe cerebral palsy and limited use of his hands and fingers.

He said that QWERTY has become so entrenched unfortunately that the human race is almost stuck with it.

Lambie said that QWERTY was originally designed to slow people down and space the most used letters far apart so typewriter arms would not stick together.

He has developed a keyboard for Android phones which should be ready for download as an app between August and September.

At the moment he is targeting developing countries, such as India and the Philippines, where people have not grown up with QWERTY keyboards.

However, it will be jolly hard to get people who use QWERTY to relearn something new.

http://news.techeye.net/hardware/res...to-kill-qwerty