I'm certified at 260 words per minute, but even so Jonathan Coulton's "I Feel Fantastic" was too much for me. I only got 77% accuracy. Can you do better?
Download the 4-song demo of Steno Hero at http://stenoarcade.com or via Steam. Works with any steno machine or qwerty keyboard.
You really need a minimum of 16-key rollover to do steno properly. Otherwise you're just really constrained in the number of chords you're able to write.
Each finger can press up to two keys at a time (top row, bottom row, or both rows together). Right pinky can press up to four at a time (two rows plus two columns), and right index can press up to three at a time (two rows plus asterisk column).
The Android app is actually pretty decent; you use it Swype-style, but rather than employing Swype's predictive method, it's 100% deterministic, so you know what you're going to get every time.
Yeah, one of the things I love about steno (as opposed to predictive systems like voice recognition or autocorrect) is its 100% determinism. That tiny pause of hesitation to wait and see whether a word has come out properly is so completely disruptive of flow for me. In the most recent video, I basically did the whole thing just keeping my eyes on the text I was transcribing from, rather than watching my output. You can see me correcting a few errors, but that's because my fingers told me that I'd made one, which prompted me to look over and figure out what I'd screwed up. Otherwise I could trust that whenever I hit a stroke, it translated as the exact same thing every time, so I never have to keep hovering over my text watching for errors. It makes the whole process way more pleasurable.
Weird. You're right; it doesn't work. Must have something to do with the layer Plover's using for keyboard output. That's frustrating. I'll bring it up with the developers.
But yeah, making a comprehensive steno tutorial video game is pretty much at the top of our list right now. We've even got some funding set aside for art assets and stuff; it's just about finding the right developers at this point.
I'm in talks with a small NYC private school to possibly start some middle schoolers on an informal course in steno. We'll see if they take to it. I'm hoping it'll be like ducks to water. Stay tuned!
Download the 4-song demo of Steno Hero at http://stenoarcade.com or via Steam. Works with any steno machine or qwerty keyboard.