cool. i love this kind of thing. the main issue for me is that ive tried something similar to this before and found it hurt me in more situations than it helped. i really liked the idea of alternatives to QWERTY and decided to learn a layout called Workman. i found that the inability/lack of regular practice with a standard keyboard made using any device that was not my own such as public/school computers an absolute pain. Eventually i bit the bullet, relearned QWERTY, and have had a better experience since then. Again, i love the idea, concept, and product. If i had this in 2020, i would have purchased and learned to use it no doubt. Im sure that it is fantastic. Good stuff!
@@aqwek Well, I have used different layouts (how the page looks) from federal to state court, for example. But you bring up an EXCELLENT point. It's great if you use the same or slightly different alphabets in the Romance languages. But what if it's Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Korean? And, yes, the layout would determine right to left or up to down. I have no clue how Stan does it. He does Korean and Japanese to show off that he can because he's a smarty pants polyglot. This is an amazing take he did before a speed contest -- amazing because while we often smash two to six words together you just can't with this song. I write this same way but I write this fast only in my dreams! czcams.com/video/UvEW5ZuwvpU/video.html
@@nitanice It's so amazing! I'm not going to learn another language because I don't use any at all, but seeing other languages in action is incredible! I guess it could just be a lot of practice and remembering layouts.
Now, this is an honest question, I'm not trying to be snarky. Maybe I'm just missing stunting. My mother's been a stenographer for 40+ years. I helped her with transcription to help pay for college. My understand is that steno machines aren't suitable as general purpose keyboard replacements. I know multiple stenographers who do real time transcription but none of them use their machines for general purpose typing. They use their machines for dictation and then use a standard keyboard general purpose work and preparing transcripts. My mom would NEVER write an email using her steno machine. But you seem to be presenting this is a general purpose typing solution. So...am i missing something here? The advertisement here seems to contradict all my experience with steno machines.
I'm a reporter. When we use our steno machines to do realtime, each new word is written after the last word. When doing a transcript, you can't just put the cursor where you'd like it and use your machine. You MUST use a regular keyboard for that. I'm curious what this keyboard can do because I'd much prefer it if I could use my steno keyboard versus a regular one.
The guy behind the Plover software I use (free/open steno software) has a great video on this very topic. And yes, many of us use it for everything. I switched over entirely about a month ago, and haven't missed qwerty. I can do more on my steno board, and it keeps getting better all the time as I improve, as I try out new plugins for the software, and as I (and others in the community) come up with new ideas. I'm using a Uni. czcams.com/video/XlThyTMjujg/video.html
@@blackbird1132 Might help. But there's things we do with our regular keyboards like highlighting three words and then hitting one key to cap just the first letter or highlighting multiple words and hyphenating them with one stroke. Having said that, I suppose you could create different strokes to do that.
it depends on the steno theory, but often you'd either type a long word as a series of multiple separate syllables, split it into a base word and a standard affix (like -ability), or a word is shortened (like hypothetically, the chord for strengths being more like "strenths", although i think most if not all consonant clusters in english have chords)
It also really, really depends on how likely you are to encounter that word in a given job. A 4-syllable word likely to be encountered several times a day (the courthouse's city name, for example) will probably be a shorter/easier sequence than an obscure 2-syllable word.
Hi! Is there a reason the keys on the other products you sell (polyglot and uni v4) are not labeled? I get that there is a learning curve, but is printing the letters on the keys expensive enough to justify not doing it?
I haven’t really learned how to properly type on a physical keyboard yet, i never really successfully learned, not even when it was being taught to me in school, would it be recommended to learn steno instead and what would be some benefits and drawbacks of learning steno instead
Probably not. Stenographers learn to type on steno machines AND on regular keyboards. They use both in their workflow. And when using a keyboard you just need to know the language. For steno machines you need to learn shorthand, a new paradigm for interpreting words, and you have to manually manage a transcription dictionary. In exchange you can type INCREDIBLY fast (faster than you can think of what to type, generally) and the ability to type for HOURS. But that's not a tradeoff that's worthwhile for most people.
@@riplikash there are dictionaries for movement keys, keyboard shortcuts and text navigation for plover. but i agree with people who say steno sucks for coding
@blackbird1132 that's kind of my point. Yes, there are dictionaries for just about anything. That's the strength and the weakness. For EVERY job they have to go and carefully curate a dictionary for that specific domain, researching and gathering all the most common, difficult words they are likely to run into. And when they run into words they weren't prepared for they have to mark it and go back over the transcript, inserting all the words they missed. Specialized tool that trades overall speed for speed in the moment of transcription. So, as you say, there's a dictionary for all the regular keys that aren't represented. Then a dictionary for talking about Mexican food. LOTR. Star Wars. Cars. Medical terms. Every coding language. Etc. It's a tool HIGHLY TUNED for speed. But that type of speed is only helpful in a very specific situation: real time transcription. It's SO good at that, it's STILL the best tool we have. Even better than modern voice recognition. But outside of that scenario...we just don't THINK that fast when authoring code or paragraphs. Once you break 100wpm you'll rarely be round full speed in day to day use. So the extra effort of managing dictionaries, swapping them based on context, learning shorthand, and having specialized keyboards is rather wasted.
@@riplikash Also. You only have to learn something once. How often do you need to enter another domain. New hobby every week? And actual words are just phonetic, easy to remember.
There's a number button on the outside of each pair of vowel keys. They're called "thumbers", because they're thumb numbers. They work the same way as the number bar, though.
@@nitanice heh heh 😄 There is one annoyance with the thumbers that's fixable, but which I haven't gotten around to yet. I can't hit EU to invert a two-digit pair if it involves the 5, because my thumbers are between the vowel key pairs (between O and E), so if my left thumb is left of O to hit the A for the 5, then it can't also hit the thumber to the right of the O, so I have to use the right side thumber, but then my right thumb can't hit EU to invert the digits. The trick is to allow just the E to invert, but I haven't bothered getting that working yet. One of these days... Anyway, as a court reporter, you might find this interesting. It's by the guy who currently maintains the Plover software I use to translate my Uni keyboard's strokes: czcams.com/video/XlThyTMjujg/video.html
@@gfixler You are so insanely nice for answering. I have to sleep on it to make sense of it. But thanks for responding Are you a court reporter? I am. Just asking.
@@nitanice Nope! I'm just a hobbyist. I learned about steno through Plover back in 2013, and really wanted to try it, but there weren't really any hobby level boards. I finally got a Splitography for Christmas, 2021, and now I somehow have 5 boards/machines, with a 6th on the way 😆 I'm writing this on a Uni. It's fun! I switched to it for everything on my PC about a month ago. I'm amazed by court reporters!
I am guessing this would not be suitable for casual people that type to friends often since it involves typing a lot of "improper" vocabulary or slang.
I guess it depends on how much slang you use. I think typically people have a finite amount of slang they use all the time, and you can just add that to your personal dictionaries. I added rizz and skibidi recently, and each is one stroke. It literally takes seconds, like 5-10 seconds to add a new definition, through a popup window. There already is a lot of shortened stuff in there, too, like I hit WAPBT/TO for "want to", and TKPW-G/TO for "going to", but I also have the chords WAUPB and TKPWAUPB for "wanna", and "gonna". I have K*D for "kinda" and K*F for "kind of". So you can add that kind of (that K*F) stuff easily. You can also use, or even make your own affixes. The -G key usually adds −ing to the end of words, but if you hit *G, you get −in', so I can stroke TKPWO/*G to get "goin'", and that works on everything. For example, bake with the −G is baking, but with the *G is bakin'. Notice that it actually deletes the e at the end of bake and then adds the ing, because the default affixes are orthographically aware. There are a whole bunch of rules that dictate how things like suffixes modify words. I run into weird words all the time that I can quickly build out of parts, like skibidiriffic (two strokes: SKEUBD/R*EUFBG; I added the −riffic suffix myself), and rizztastic (three strokes: REUZ/TAS/TEUBG). If you do run into something that isn't in your dictionaries, you just fingerspell it out with the steno alphabet. The difference is that in qwerty, you're spelling literally everything all the time, and in steno, most of the time you don't have to. It also does all the spaces for you, and only if you don't want a space, then you hit a thing to kill the next space.
I'm not trying to hate here, but your keyboards are WAY overpriced. It is basically just a PCB with some components on it. Same with the other ones. I made an equivalent one to the Uni V4 for 18 dollars (the Uni V4 is 100 dollars) and it still looks, sounds, and feels as good as the Uni. The price for the asterisk is still not justified either because I am currently designing one that will only be about 9 dollars! I love the idea and the product, I just can't find any way to justify the price. If anyone doesn't believe me, I used the steno keyboard I made to write this comment.
Could you post some links or a tutorial? I'm really interested in this but obviously don't want to drop a small fortune on it. Also tinkering with this stuff seems fun :)
You are not a business man, right? Add marketing costs if you advertise, you need a customer support, need stock for scaling, people who build this etc.
@@Sergiuss555 not many are, but we exist. There are examples on CZcams, and the guy who maintains the software (Plover) has been doing it for many years.
Human stenographers are more accurate, do better with accents, are able to ask for clarification if needed, are much better at discerning what was said by which person and making sure this is noted, can testify off-record, are more able to distinguish between background noise and actual dialogue, are not susceptible to mechanical errors, will immediately know to halt proceedings if there is a problem with their note-taking, can help with research, and last but not least, there is a concern from the judiciary that audio- (or video-) recorded statements by anybody involved in a court case, from witnesses over accused to the judges themselves, might be edited and/or taken out of context to cause harm. Hope that helped.
Voice to text hasn't replaced stenographers. They still make 6 figure incomes precisely because voice to text STILL is not NEARLY accurate enough or fast enough.
I hate talking to my echo dots all the time. I would really hate if I had to talk to my computer the entire day. I can listen to music, or watch videos while I work, and not have to mute them constantly. If someone starts talking while I'm writing, it doesn't mess up, because it heard their voice, or misheard me. I have to yell "Alexa, stop!" all the time, because I'll ask her to turn on the light, and she starts playing music, or answers the question wrong, or I'll have to repeat myself several times, because she didn't notice I spoke to her (started happening this year, driving me crazy), and don't get me started on how much I need to correct on my phone whenever I try to dictate into it. Sometimes every word is wrong. No thanks. If I spoke everything I write on a computer every day-thousands and thousand of words-I'd have no voice left, and it would be many, many times slower, less accurate, and more frustrating. I wrote this on my Uni steno keyboard, thankfully. Also, hOW am I SupPosED tO WrITe SarCasTicALlY, lIKe tHis, uSinG jUSt My VoIcE? That's one of many alternate modes of writing I can toggle on with a stroke.
Preorder your Asterisk today!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/stenokeyboards/the-asterisk-steno-keyboard-for-beginners?ref=4vgl2c
Just found this today, and I missed the kickstarter campaign... any other way to buy or pre-order the Asterisk?
Sounds like a nice entry into Steno.
cool. i love this kind of thing. the main issue for me is that ive tried something similar to this before and found it hurt me in more situations than it helped. i really liked the idea of alternatives to QWERTY and decided to learn a layout called Workman. i found that the inability/lack of regular practice with a standard keyboard made using any device that was not my own such as public/school computers an absolute pain. Eventually i bit the bullet, relearned QWERTY, and have had a better experience since then. Again, i love the idea, concept, and product. If i had this in 2020, i would have purchased and learned to use it no doubt. Im sure that it is fantastic. Good stuff!
😢 i missed this amazing product
Nooooo i missed the Kickstarter 😭😭 I'd really love one of these. 😢
I love seeing how much cheaper stenography is getting! I own a Uni, and I love it. Maybe someday it'll be less than $10 to get a steno board.
A wild Aqwek sighting?!?!? What a coincidence...
I’m actually thinking of buying an asterisk lol. (Also I saw your video on stenography)
@@stxrdew ha! You should try steno! It's great fun, and an asterisk isn't too expensive to buy. (And, um, thanks? It was a low effort post)
Who can type kit kat for the first time?
Backed!
Will it be suitable for other languages? Or is it a software solution?
I believe steno systems are language specific, but a couple of other languages use the same layout as this one
You should be able to use it if it has the same keys.
@@nitanice he might also have to be using the different layouts too, which you would need for other languages.
@@aqwek Well, I have used different layouts (how the page looks) from federal to state court, for example. But you bring up an EXCELLENT point. It's great if you use the same or slightly different alphabets in the Romance languages. But what if it's Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Korean? And, yes, the layout would determine right to left or up to down. I have no clue how Stan does it. He does Korean and Japanese to show off that he can because he's a smarty pants polyglot.
This is an amazing take he did before a speed contest -- amazing because while we often smash two to six words together you just can't with this song. I write this same way but I write this fast only in my dreams!
czcams.com/video/UvEW5ZuwvpU/video.html
@@nitanice It's so amazing! I'm not going to learn another language because I don't use any at all, but seeing other languages in action is incredible! I guess it could just be a lot of practice and remembering layouts.
Why not make an argenomic keyboard? Plus, divided like totem at least.
Now, this is an honest question, I'm not trying to be snarky. Maybe I'm just missing stunting.
My mother's been a stenographer for 40+ years. I helped her with transcription to help pay for college.
My understand is that steno machines aren't suitable as general purpose keyboard replacements.
I know multiple stenographers who do real time transcription but none of them use their machines for general purpose typing. They use their machines for dictation and then use a standard keyboard general purpose work and preparing transcripts.
My mom would NEVER write an email using her steno machine.
But you seem to be presenting this is a general purpose typing solution.
So...am i missing something here? The advertisement here seems to contradict all my experience with steno machines.
I'm a reporter. When we use our steno machines to do realtime, each new word is written after the last word. When doing a transcript, you can't just put the cursor where you'd like it and use your machine. You MUST use a regular keyboard for that. I'm curious what this keyboard can do because I'd much prefer it if I could use my steno keyboard versus a regular one.
The guy behind the Plover software I use (free/open steno software) has a great video on this very topic. And yes, many of us use it for everything. I switched over entirely about a month ago, and haven't missed qwerty. I can do more on my steno board, and it keeps getting better all the time as I improve, as I try out new plugins for the software, and as I (and others in the community) come up with new ideas. I'm using a Uni.
czcams.com/video/XlThyTMjujg/video.html
@@nitanice watch aerick's videos about movement keys with steno and stuff
@@blackbird1132 Might help. But there's things we do with our regular keyboards like highlighting three words and then hitting one key to cap just the first letter or highlighting multiple words and hyphenating them with one stroke. Having said that, I suppose you could create different strokes to do that.
How would you type multi-syllable words like "maneuverability," or words with consonant clusters like "strengths"?
it depends on the steno theory, but often you'd either type a long word as a series of multiple separate syllables, split it into a base word and a standard affix (like -ability), or a word is shortened (like hypothetically, the chord for strengths being more like "strenths", although i think most if not all consonant clusters in english have chords)
It also really, really depends on how likely you are to encounter that word in a given job. A 4-syllable word likely to be encountered several times a day (the courthouse's city name, for example) will probably be a shorter/easier sequence than an obscure 2-syllable word.
MAOUFRBLT....anyway, that's how I write it.
Where can I buy this steno keyboard asterisk
Am I still able to pledge for this project?
Hi! Is there a reason the keys on the other products you sell (polyglot and uni v4) are not labeled? I get that there is a learning curve, but is printing the letters on the keys expensive enough to justify not doing it?
Steno writers just never have labels on them. I think it's just not expected that they will.
Can you also make it on software, so people can download it and try it without having the hardware?
thats what plover is, you can use a regular keyboard (but it needs to be n-key rollover)
How can I write a dot?
what is the background music?
When can I buy it?
I haven’t really learned how to properly type on a physical keyboard yet, i never really successfully learned, not even when it was being taught to me in school, would it be recommended to learn steno instead and what would be some benefits and drawbacks of learning steno instead
Probably not. Stenographers learn to type on steno machines AND on regular keyboards. They use both in their workflow.
And when using a keyboard you just need to know the language. For steno machines you need to learn shorthand, a new paradigm for interpreting words, and you have to manually manage a transcription dictionary.
In exchange you can type INCREDIBLY fast (faster than you can think of what to type, generally) and the ability to type for HOURS.
But that's not a tradeoff that's worthwhile for most people.
@@riplikash there are dictionaries for movement keys, keyboard shortcuts and text navigation for plover. but i agree with people who say steno sucks for coding
@blackbird1132 that's kind of my point. Yes, there are dictionaries for just about anything. That's the strength and the weakness. For EVERY job they have to go and carefully curate a dictionary for that specific domain, researching and gathering all the most common, difficult words they are likely to run into. And when they run into words they weren't prepared for they have to mark it and go back over the transcript, inserting all the words they missed.
Specialized tool that trades overall speed for speed in the moment of transcription.
So, as you say, there's a dictionary for all the regular keys that aren't represented. Then a dictionary for talking about Mexican food. LOTR. Star Wars. Cars. Medical terms. Every coding language. Etc.
It's a tool HIGHLY TUNED for speed.
But that type of speed is only helpful in a very specific situation: real time transcription. It's SO good at that, it's STILL the best tool we have. Even better than modern voice recognition.
But outside of that scenario...we just don't THINK that fast when authoring code or paragraphs. Once you break 100wpm you'll rarely be round full speed in day to day use.
So the extra effort of managing dictionaries, swapping them based on context, learning shorthand, and having specialized keyboards is rather wasted.
@@riplikash but dopamine from writing "you don't really care about" in one stroke
@@riplikash Also. You only have to learn something once. How often do you need to enter another domain. New hobby every week? And actual words are just phonetic, easy to remember.
please take me as your apprentice :V
What if you meant to type "kat"?
There is a way to type individual letters called "fingerspelling" so you can type literally anything even if it is not in your dictionary.
where to buy this steno keyboard
it is not released yet
How can I get this in India
Hello, you can back the project here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/stenokeyboards/the-asterisk-steno-keyboard-for-beginners?ref=4vgl2c
What if I actually want to write kat
you could type k and at separately.
or make a shortcut for kat.
Are the numbers the same as on a regular steno machine?
There's a number button on the outside of each pair of vowel keys. They're called "thumbers", because they're thumb numbers. They work the same way as the number bar, though.
@@gfixler Thanks for the reply. As a court reporter, I'm intrigued but a bit confused. 🙂
@@nitanice heh heh 😄 There is one annoyance with the thumbers that's fixable, but which I haven't gotten around to yet. I can't hit EU to invert a two-digit pair if it involves the 5, because my thumbers are between the vowel key pairs (between O and E), so if my left thumb is left of O to hit the A for the 5, then it can't also hit the thumber to the right of the O, so I have to use the right side thumber, but then my right thumb can't hit EU to invert the digits. The trick is to allow just the E to invert, but I haven't bothered getting that working yet. One of these days...
Anyway, as a court reporter, you might find this interesting. It's by the guy who currently maintains the Plover software I use to translate my Uni keyboard's strokes: czcams.com/video/XlThyTMjujg/video.html
@@gfixler You are so insanely nice for answering. I have to sleep on it to make sense of it. But thanks for responding Are you a court reporter? I am. Just asking.
@@nitanice Nope! I'm just a hobbyist. I learned about steno through Plover back in 2013, and really wanted to try it, but there weren't really any hobby level boards. I finally got a Splitography for Christmas, 2021, and now I somehow have 5 boards/machines, with a 6th on the way 😆 I'm writing this on a Uni. It's fun! I switched to it for everything on my PC about a month ago. I'm amazed by court reporters!
Мне хватает и одного пальца
😂😂😂
I am guessing this would not be suitable for casual people that type to friends often since it involves typing a lot of "improper" vocabulary or slang.
I guess it depends on how much slang you use. I think typically people have a finite amount of slang they use all the time, and you can just add that to your personal dictionaries. I added rizz and skibidi recently, and each is one stroke. It literally takes seconds, like 5-10 seconds to add a new definition, through a popup window. There already is a lot of shortened stuff in there, too, like I hit WAPBT/TO for "want to", and TKPW-G/TO for "going to", but I also have the chords WAUPB and TKPWAUPB for "wanna", and "gonna". I have K*D for "kinda" and K*F for "kind of". So you can add that kind of (that K*F) stuff easily. You can also use, or even make your own affixes. The -G key usually adds −ing to the end of words, but if you hit *G, you get −in', so I can stroke TKPWO/*G to get "goin'", and that works on everything. For example, bake with the −G is baking, but with the *G is bakin'. Notice that it actually deletes the e at the end of bake and then adds the ing, because the default affixes are orthographically aware. There are a whole bunch of rules that dictate how things like suffixes modify words. I run into weird words all the time that I can quickly build out of parts, like skibidiriffic (two strokes: SKEUBD/R*EUFBG; I added the −riffic suffix myself), and rizztastic (three strokes: REUZ/TAS/TEUBG). If you do run into something that isn't in your dictionaries, you just fingerspell it out with the steno alphabet. The difference is that in qwerty, you're spelling literally everything all the time, and in steno, most of the time you don't have to. It also does all the spaces for you, and only if you don't want a space, then you hit a thing to kill the next space.
How can that even be ergonomic? It's just a flat board.
It is literally all you need.
its perfectly paired with the apple magic mouse!
completely disagree with some other comments here about it being overpriced. it really was the most affordable way to get into hobby steno!
I'm not trying to hate here, but your keyboards are WAY overpriced. It is basically just a PCB with some components on it. Same with the other ones. I made an equivalent one to the Uni V4 for 18 dollars (the Uni V4 is 100 dollars) and it still looks, sounds, and feels as good as the Uni. The price for the asterisk is still not justified either because I am currently designing one that will only be about 9 dollars! I love the idea and the product, I just can't find any way to justify the price. If anyone doesn't believe me, I used the steno keyboard I made to write this comment.
Could you post some links or a tutorial? I'm really interested in this but obviously don't want to drop a small fortune on it. Also tinkering with this stuff seems fun :)
You are not a business man, right? Add marketing costs if you advertise, you need a customer support, need stock for scaling, people who build this etc.
Not to mention that a real Sterno keyboard cost like $3,000 and it's definitely not worth that in parts
@@pdalmao Yeah absolutely! All of my stuff is open-source and I will post a video about it too.
@@rstm32 555% markup??
probably not very useful for programming or math
i think it depends on how you set up the software
@@jangamecuber no one's gonna do it
and thats why it wasn't made for it...?
@@Sergiuss555 not many are, but we exist. There are examples on CZcams, and the guy who maintains the software (Plover) has been doing it for many years.
@@Tobikaboom1 I think it was made because it would be useful for other use cases, not because it would be not useful for programming.
They have voice to text nowadays so no need to type
Human stenographers are more accurate, do better with accents, are able to ask for clarification if needed, are much better at discerning what was said by which person and making sure this is noted, can testify off-record, are more able to distinguish between background noise and actual dialogue, are not susceptible to mechanical errors, will immediately know to halt proceedings if there is a problem with their note-taking, can help with research, and last but not least, there is a concern from the judiciary that audio- (or video-) recorded statements by anybody involved in a court case, from witnesses over accused to the judges themselves, might be edited and/or taken out of context to cause harm. Hope that helped.
Voice to text hasn't replaced stenographers. They still make 6 figure incomes precisely because voice to text STILL is not NEARLY accurate enough or fast enough.
I hate talking to my echo dots all the time. I would really hate if I had to talk to my computer the entire day. I can listen to music, or watch videos while I work, and not have to mute them constantly. If someone starts talking while I'm writing, it doesn't mess up, because it heard their voice, or misheard me. I have to yell "Alexa, stop!" all the time, because I'll ask her to turn on the light, and she starts playing music, or answers the question wrong, or I'll have to repeat myself several times, because she didn't notice I spoke to her (started happening this year, driving me crazy), and don't get me started on how much I need to correct on my phone whenever I try to dictate into it. Sometimes every word is wrong. No thanks. If I spoke everything I write on a computer every day-thousands and thousand of words-I'd have no voice left, and it would be many, many times slower, less accurate, and more frustrating. I wrote this on my Uni steno keyboard, thankfully. Also, hOW am I SupPosED tO WrITe SarCasTicALlY, lIKe tHis, uSinG jUSt My VoIcE? That's one of many alternate modes of writing I can toggle on with a stroke.