I've been a serious believer in wearable/ubiquitous computing since the late 1990s, when phones were bulky monochrome devices you used to call people, and Palm Pilots were brand new and slick. Most wearable geeks are devs, with a few of us sysadmins mixed in. I don't think the basic principles have changed in the past ten years - it's just that Americans are embracing smartphones as the path to ubiquitous computing, rather than shrinking netbooks small enough to get there. (The convergence continues - but there's still a big gap here between a large smartphone with a tiny keyboard, and a tiny netbook with a real keyboard. In Japan the gap is minimal. Unfortunately, the in-between space tends to be filled with touchscreens rather than keyboards.)
The best way to achieve a decent screen size is with a head-mounted display. It would take a major breakthrough to change this. HMDs can be very small, light, and high-res. They can be transparent or opaque and immersive, monocular or binocular, obvious or hidden to outside viewers.
One-handed chording keyboards are the traditional choice of the wearable community, but there's a steep learning curve. Other alternatives include arm-mounted, one-handed keyboards, or half to full size keyboards that fold or roll up for carrying.
One idea I've never seen, that seems promising to me, is a waist-mounted keyboard tray - you could use it with both hands while standing, for example while waiting in line. If it was a tray that held a folding or roll-up keyboard, each part could also be used separately - the tray could hold other items when your hands were full, and the keyboard could be used on a table when you weren't wearing the tray.
I think in the short term, sticking with the text and keyboard paradigm will be most successful - so these are ways to do that effectively. But I agree that in the long term, we'll be finding new possibilities that leverage the advantages of handheld technology, instead of treating it like a retarded cousin that needs extra help.
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The best way to achieve a decent screen size is with a head-mounted display. It would take a major breakthrough to change this. HMDs can be very small, light, and high-res. They can be transparent or opaque and immersive, monocular or binocular, obvious or hidden to outside viewers.
One-handed chording keyboards are the traditional choice of the wearable community, but there's a steep learning curve. Other alternatives include arm-mounted, one-handed keyboards, or half to full size keyboards that fold or roll up for carrying.
One idea I've never seen, that seems promising to me, is a waist-mounted keyboard tray - you could use it with both hands while standing, for example while waiting in line. If it was a tray that held a folding or roll-up keyboard, each part could also be used separately - the tray could hold other items when your hands were full, and the keyboard could be used on a table when you weren't wearing the tray.
I think in the short term, sticking with the text and keyboard paradigm will be most successful - so these are ways to do that effectively. But I agree that in the long term, we'll be finding new possibilities that leverage the advantages of handheld technology, instead of treating it like a retarded cousin that needs extra help.