keyboard

Boost your typing powers with SwiftKey

If you're not familiar with SwiftKey, it's a Google Play Editors' Choice app, and it won the coveted Most Innovative App award at the 2011 Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona, Spain. What sets it apart from other keyboard replacement apps is its ability to understand not just patterns in your typing, but also how words work together. This makes it scary good at predicting the next word you want to type, sometimes even before you begin typing it. What's more, SwiftKey can continue to learn from your e-mail, SMS, and even social media accounts (if enabled), so … Read more

Boost your typing powers with SwiftKey

If you're not familiar with SwiftKey, it's a Google Play Editors' Choice app, and it won the coveted Most Innovative App award at the 2011 Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona, Spain. What sets it apart from other keyboard replacement apps is its capability to understand not just patterns in your typing, but also how words work together. This makes it scary good at predicting the next word you want to type, sometimes even before you begin typing it. What's more, SwiftKey can continue to learn from your e-mail, SMS, and even social media accounts (if enabled), so … Read more

Managing input methods in OS X

OS X offers multiple input method options to offer support for many world languages and regional input conventions. While this allows the system to be set up to work well for people from different parts of the world, the way OS X manages input methods may confuse a few who make use of multiple input methods.

For example, a standard U.S. keyboard layout will have access to the common characters and symbols used in American English, but this will not work as well for typing in French, where the need for common character accents requires a different input method. … Read more

CheatSheet reveals keyboard shortcuts for any OS X app

Learning, keeping track, and remembering every keyboard shortcut for every OS X app is near impossible. While there are ways to figure out what keyboard shortcuts are available for some apps, those methods aren't always convenient to access.

CheatSheet is a small OS X app that runs in the background and will show you all the keyboard shortcuts for whatever app you're currently using.

Getting started with CheatSheet is easy; just make sure you're running OS X 10.7. 

Download and install CheatSheet. It's free. Unzip and move the app into your Applications folder. Double-click … Read more

Logitech debuts new Wireless Solar Keyboard K760 for Mac, iPhone, and iPad

Meet the new Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K760, the successor to Logitech's first solar keyboard, the K750, which earned a CNET Editors' Choice.

From a design standpoint, the K760 is more compact than the K750 and more closely resembles Apple's own Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard with the addition of the strip of solar cells at the top of the unit.

The key feature upgrade here is something that Logitech calls "Bluetooth connectivity with easy-switching capability." What that means is you can pair multiple devices -- such as a Mac, iPad, or iPhone -- and quickly switch among … Read more

Best tech: Cheap speakers, hot cameras, and Wi-Fi scales

Memorial Day is considered the traditional start of summer here in the U.S., and we noticed the streets, subways, and elevators getting less and less populated as the week wore on. But it was another full week for the CNET Reviews team, who cranked out more than 20 tech product reviews -- including a few items that are beyond our usual purview.

Hot cameras We sampled only two cameras this week, but both were four-star winners.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX30V is camera royalty, of sorts: the compact megazoom model is the successor to 2011's DSC-HX9V, an Editors' Choice … Read more

Three more ways to take a screenshot on a Mac

As a follow up to last week's post about three keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots on a Mac, I present three more keyboard shortcut tips.

Each of these tips uses the Command-Shift-4 keyboard shortcut. Hitting these three keys simultaneously turns your Mac's cursor into a crosshair, which you can drag to select a portion of your screen to capture. Releasing the mouse button or trackpad takes the shot.… Read more

Type faster on the iPad's split keyboard with six hidden keys

I don't use the iPad for typing anything longer than a URL in Safari or a line or two of an e-mail, and when I do use the keyboard, I rarely split it. This tip from a post on iPad Insight, however, might make me reconsider using the split keyboard.

Lurking along the inside edges of the split keyboard are six hidden keys. They simply repeat three of the available keys on the opposite side of the keyboard, but these hidden keys might help touch typists type faster.

Here's the deal: instead of using your right thumb to … Read more

Four tips for the Command key in OS X

One of the defining features of the Mac platform is the Command key, which originated from the Open Apple key on earlier Apple computer systems and joins the Shift, Control, Option, and Fn keys as modifier options for keyboard shortcuts in OS X.

The Command key is the primary modifier key for the Mac platform and is used to perform basic editing and application management commands such as quitting, printing, and copying and pasting, but in addition it can be used in combinations to force a hardware reset and to boot to special modes such as the OS X Lion … Read more