cre8txt keyboard translates SMS slang to English

Granted, it seems that we'll all be using SMS slang to condense our resumés in the not-too-distant future, but on the off chance that unadulterated English is still required in some facet of your life, the cre8txt keyboard will make things an awful lot easier. This gem plugs into one's PC via USB and actually translates texting jargon into words that Merriam-Webster would approve of, and in case that wasn't gimmicky enough, it also includes predictive text software to complete sentences before you can even think up your own endings. We still can't see such a device being worth the £49.99 ($105) asking price, but we're betting that our kids will view things differently. Oh, the humanity.

[Via ShinyShiny]

[Bweetza @ Nov 12th 2007 3:37PM]

Ugh. MySpace kiddies rejoice! Are they releasing an emo keypad that auto-cuts by way of an extended spacebar?

[paul34 @ Nov 12th 2007 4:11PM]

omg dis wud b gud 4 my BFF jill

[webmaster @ Nov 12th 2007 3:38PM]

So does it translate the slang into English or does it get it's dictionary from Merriam-Webster ie American and not REAL English ;)

[Rebecca @ Nov 12th 2007 6:41PM]

...bold criticism of American English from someone who can't distinguish "it's" from "its" ! At least us Yankees know when to use an apostrophe.

[grjohnston @ Nov 12th 2007 8:46PM]

Yes. Every single Yank knows all about apostrophes. That's why this thing is being made!

[oshean @ Nov 12th 2007 3:42PM]

y! i'v bin w8tin 4 eva 4 ths kybrd :D

[Dav1dfv @ Nov 12th 2007 3:54PM]

I find this totally amazing!
We had perfectly good English, made it into written SMS slang and now to help us write again we have to buy a gadget to go back to English.
Something else that bugs me… Some great minds have worked really hard to improve on the old hissing and cracking vinyls and eventually created high quality audio CD, now is with all this technology you would have thought that we would get better quality audio and video for that matter? Nah, instead we listen to low bit rate .mp3 and watch YouTube videos on tiny screen. Strange.

[T-Bone @ Nov 12th 2007 4:13PM]

Am I the only one that regularly texts but still spells out everything? It isn't like I'm trying to stay under my limit. I just discovered that I could move up to 1500 messages/month for the same price I'm paying for 1000.

[DownwardMonkey @ Nov 12th 2007 4:34PM]

Nope, I'm with you all the way. Everything from Myspace to my phone I spell things out how they are meant to be spelt. I'm dyslexic and I spent forever as a kid being a joke for not being able to spell and now feel that everyone else has given up.

[o29 @ Nov 12th 2007 4:56PM]

Me too.

I always spell out things in my text messages, and the worst I'll ever do is leave out an apostrophe or random punctuation mark. It's just a pain to search for an apostrophe without a full keyboard.

[spam_from_engadget @ Nov 12th 2007 6:37PM]

I start to write it out in full, with punctuation, and watch the number of characters remaining drop towards zero. So I start to get more economical, and eventually I have to go back to the start and reduce everything to abbreviations so that it will fit. The result is the worst of both worlds: it takes ages to type it out in full, but the recipients still thinks I'm a teenager....

[McFly @ Nov 12th 2007 9:19PM]

m 2

[Neo @ Dec 28th 2007 4:32PM]

Netspeak is THE. GREATEST. Online "sin", as far as I'm concerned. It makes my eyes bleed, I swear. It just gets under my skin in a way that just.... eeeggghh. How hard IS it to add three extra letters to actually make SENSE? A couple of years back I started ignoring messages from strangers who couldn't be bothered to write out their message. One "R U there?" and I'm done.

This is RIDICULOUS. I had to lean to text wicked fast.... because I spell out everything. Every time. sometimes I wish I didn't, but I do.

For the $$ to afford a phone with a full keyboard.... *sigh*

[CT @ Nov 12th 2007 4:17PM]

And new wave of court recorders are born!

[MacroEQ @ Nov 12th 2007 4:21PM]

When are they going to invent a device that disables kids mobile phones who play loud music at the back of the bus whilst annoying all other passengers? (innit).

[Carbonize @ Nov 12th 2007 5:31PM]

They already have. It's called a hammer.

[Pavan @ Nov 13th 2007 7:23AM]

And people criticize me for supporting abortion until age 18 - as in, if the kid's annoying and under 18, it'd Dremel and Dyson time Bobby!

Ps, flying into/out of Orlando is the best form of birth control out there.

[Neo @ Dec 28th 2007 4:35PM]

Thank GOD SOMEONE SAID THIS.


That drives me NUTS!

[Jason @ Nov 12th 2007 4:23PM]

other than novelty, I don't really get the point of this thing? do "kids these days" really find it easier to type via a numeric cellphone keypad than a full-on keyboard? you know, where you can use all 10 fingers... and have dedicated keys for all 26 letters of the alphabet plus punctuation marks?

srsly?

[lassi @ Nov 13th 2007 10:11AM]

i don't know anyone who would buy this.


well, i guess.. some mobile device programmers might want this. but apart from them, who wants to t9 on a fuc*** pc that has a keyboard.

[atrain @ Nov 12th 2007 4:28PM]

Wait a sec?
Whats the point of this being hardware? It seems like this could easily have just been a software plugin to standard applications (Word, Firefox, IE).

Is this some new anti-pirating scheme? (Old actually, In the Commodore 64 days, a certain piece software needed a little authorization chip connected to the computer to run, and you could copy the disk as much as you liked...)

[conor @ Nov 12th 2007 4:41PM]

...or you could just use the keyboard.

[Jack @ Nov 12th 2007 5:54PM]

This is stupid, their R&D team must be shot!

Their recruitment team should be shot twice!!

[Gina @ Nov 12th 2007 9:56PM]

I don't know if this gadget has the dictionary to handle this capability, but it would be great if it translated the abbreviations that kids use in order to evade their parent's detection of sometimes illicit activity. That way it could be a useful tool to fight online predators.

[blindside7 @ Nov 12th 2007 10:06PM]

Online predators have nothing to do with kids asking each other- yo, who's got the stuff for 2nite? u got a nug 2 sell?

What does that have to do with online predators. Let kids have a little fun.

[Gareth @ Nov 13th 2007 2:41AM]

This is silly. The idea of text speak is to make input quicker, so why not, as people have mentioned, make it software based. Which i imagine it must be somewhere along the line, possibly an install disc? Cos sorting all the calculation etc out within the device itself is silly, and although not many new words are added that are reguarly used, making it all hardware based must limit its futureproofness some what.

[lnx8 @ Nov 13th 2007 5:09AM]

This is worrying.

Basic language and keyboard skills... are they really that difficult?

[Pavan @ Nov 13th 2007 7:25AM]

Y dunt u tk a seat?

[Jimiisama @ Nov 13th 2007 10:20AM]

Yeah, this doesn't need to be hardware at all...

[John @ Nov 14th 2007 12:14AM]

A lot of you are missing the point. A computer's 10-key is laid out differently from a mobile phone and doesn't have the letters on it. This is just another option for typing, specifically catering to people who are extremely proficient with mobile phone pads, the same way some people prefer Dvorak or ergonomic layouts. Yes it could have been software, but who likes to type with a mouse?