Friday, July 22, 2011

Phone Friday: Morse Code Keyboard - Fun and Useful?

Learning More Code continues to be on my TODO list. Every once in a while, I like to poke around appbrain and see what folks are doing with Morse Code on the Android platform. I suppose my hope is that it willmy butt into gear with learning it.

Today I discovered Morse Code Keyboard, which, as you might imagine installs a keyboard which is Morse code based.

As you can see, there's not a heck of a lot to the keyboard - a big o'l dot button, a dash button, and a few other keys (space, delete, etc.).

At first I thought it might be a fun little way to force me to try to learn Morse code. But, playing around with it, it actually seems like it may be useful. That's because the dot and dash buttons are so huge - it's actually the first on screen keyboard I've ever used that feels like I really don't need to put any effort into hitting the right key.

Sure, Swype is an engineering marvel. But, for tapping out messages without looking at the screen, or doing so only every once in a while, it seems like the Morse keyboard could be a much more workable solution.

I've printed out the Morse Code alphabet, taped it to an old (1998 Coke Card - what was the heck?) loyalty card, and I should be good to go for some in field training.

Here's my new setup:

3 comments:

  1. As a former amateur radio operator who knows Morse Code, I can't encourage you to waste the time learning it. It's the reason I left the hobby. Learn C++ or TCP/IP or Arabic. Any of those three would be a better use of your time.

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  2. @opie32958 -- thanks for your honest opinion.

    I've actually still been playing with the keyboard and try to use it as often as I can. Perhaps the real benefit is that feeling you get when you learn something just by practicing the heck out of it.

    Oh, and whatever you do, don't learn C++. That language will rot your brain ;-).

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  3. Use my CuteCW (http://hamtools.org/cutecw/) software to help you learn faster. Plus it's written in C++ so it should let you taken on all of the other comments with one shot :-)

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