Company designs special keyboard for chatting

Posted by Cynical Sarah on June 3, 2006

Chatting online just got even easier with a new keyboard introduced to the world today from a little-known technology company. E-Z Corp, based in Bolivia, started shipping their first set of specialized keyboards for people who do a lot of chatting and instant messaging on their computers.

“What we did was just put a lot of well-known chatting slang on the keyboard instead of letters and punctuation,” said E-Z Corp president Joshua Esquival. “Many people already use these shortcuts so it just makes the chatting process one step faster.”

With keys such as CUL8R, , LOL and more, chatters won’t have to hunt for those pesky combinations any more on a regular keyboard. They’ll be able to express some of the most common chatting slang in just one keystroke.

“Our research shows that most online chatters don’t use a lot of punctuation or worry about correct spelling, so a lot of the keys on standard keyboard were useless to them anyway,” Esquival said.

The company started with those keys that got very little use by chatters and started replacing them with slang. Initially their goal was to just have a few of the common terms on the keyboard along with the regular alphabet.

“We soon realized, however, that there were just too many terms out there to try to narrow it down to the most common,” Esquival said. “We had researchers in chat rooms talking to people, trying to get a sense of what they would prefer as quick slang keys, and nobody could really agree on what were the best ones.”

The solution for the company was to just replace the entire keyboard with the slang terms. They kept the F keys, Shift, Enter, and Backspace as well as the arrow keys and the number pad on the right side of the keyboard. Other than that, pretty much everything else was replaced with slang.

A special key was also added that will switch the keyboard to normal when necessary.

“We understand people will still need a regular keyboard,” Esquival said. “So we had to have a way that users could still type like normal. Once they press the key, the keyboard will act like a regular one.”
Esquival said this keyboard should only be used by advanced users though.

“If you’re a hunt and peck typer, this keyboard isn’t for you,” he said. “Even if you press the button to change it to normal, you’ll still need to have advanced knowledge of where the normal keys are since the lettering on the actual keyboard won’t change back to normal.”

E-Z Corp is looking into making that possible too though. Esquival said his researchers were already working on technology for a digital keyboard that would allow the keys lettering to be changed when the keyboard is switched from easy chat mode to a normal keyboard.

“We’re determined to make this the number one product for chatters and normal computer users alike,” Esquival said. “The people in this world are focused on total convenience and ease of use. We’re here to give that to them.”

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