“Jay Leno did a text off between two text messengers and two Morse coders (Here’s a video in Microsoft Windows Media format). The Morse coders handily beat the young whippersnappers with time to spare .. It might be a fun phone app to make a Morse code messenger, if you kept your headset in and had an external sender, could be interesting. Perhaps a Morse code Skype device…”
The full article plus comments can be read by going to Make: Technology on your time.
While I’m sure this little jape was all for a bit of fun, there’s certainly something to be learned.
Principally, old technology often has a place within the new.
Is using Morse code any less intuitive than tapping out on the same keys to generate different character sequences?
I think there’s a lot to be learned from this…
4 replies on “All fingers and thumbs”
I used to do HAM Radio a decade back.. and can proudly say I am still better at sending Morse codes than text messages :)). But seriously, text messaging should be faster, as the user only has to press one button per character, whereas Morse needs on average 4 presses per character. But then, there is no seek time in Morse (text messagers have to move their finger to the next character, thus wasting time)…
I use predictive messaging, whereby the software on the phone predicts what you’re typing based on the key strokes.
It’s much faster, but the results can be a little unpredictable at times, and even funny on occasion.
I remember reading about some company that had developed a new piece of software for predictive messaging that is even more efficient, but I don’t know if such a thing ever came to market…
I despise predictive messaging. As someone who has reasonably nimble fingers, I can write text messages faster than most people with predictive text and when I recieve messages from people who use predictive text, it’s generally quite obvious because words like ‘me’ get mixed up with ‘of’
I know where you’re coming from.
It’s just not smart enough, yet.
Give it a couple of years more, maybe…