The X-Number logic can be used  among other areas in the following applications:

Electronic calculators.  Since its beginnings, early in the 1970’s, the market for pocket calculators has been very competitive.    At the end of the calculator wars, basically two types of calculators have survived:  Specialized business or scientific calculators made by large companies such as Casio, Texas Instruments Sharp, and Hewlett Packard, and regular four-function calculators made by a very wide range of companies.   In this second category, most of the times the competition is not based in functionality, but instead it is based on appearance such as display size, colors, shape, device texture and materials.  We believe that it is in this category that there is a lot of room for the usage of the 13-key design.  A change in the keyboard design, in addition of improving its usefulness by making it easier to enter numbers, could tap into the “novelty” factor of the market (users attracted to something new that has never been seen before.)

PC Software Calculators. A variation of the HEXACALC calculator written by the famous Windows programmer and author Charles Petzold has been included by Microsoft as a Windows accessory since the introduction of Windows 95. The use of a mouse to click on the keys of a software calculator is highly inconvenient, especially when the number of digits is relatively large (which is usually the case when you have to resort to the use of a calculator). This is another area where the reduction in the number of keystrokes provided by a 13-key design can be particularly useful. Currently, We are in the process of writing a Windows calculator in Visual C++ that will have this functionality (plus other ideas we have about the design of a software calculator).

On-line Internet Calculators.  This site provides several examples of On-line calculators.  We have written all of them in Java Script so that the source code could be easily reviewed and accessible, however, they can be implemented in other languages such as Java and Active-X.

 

Hand-held Computing Devices. The success of Palm Computing (whose 1999 income surpassed that of 3Com, one of  the one of its parent companies) shows the importance of these type of devices. All of them include some kind of software calculator, but most importantly, all of them have a hand-written interface that could benefit of the usage of verbal numerals.

 

Toy calculators. We've had the chance to show how to use the extended keys to enter numbers to children under the age of seven by using this approach. All were very exited when discovered how easy it was for them to enter large numbers that before they would even hardly know how to pronounce. Since then, we've been paying attention to toy calculators in the market, and found that there are very few of them. So far, the ones we found were just regular calculators made with colorful cases and packed as "toys." We believe that a toy calculator should be designed with some special functionality, which, in addition to using a 13-key very colorful keyboard, should include some kind of numerical game (like guess-and-enter-the-answer and return a right or wrong random sound) that would make its use enjoyable and educational for children.

PC Keyboards. At some point this functionality  will be added to the numerical keypads included in standard computer keyboards, the signals sent by the structure keys will then be processed by the X-Number algorithms to handle the processing of numerical data-entry operations.

Of course, the applications described above are just some examples of the possible application of this data-entry method.  In general, this method can be implemented in any device or application requiring  numerical data-entry operations.

If you are interested in obtaining a license to use this patent in your products or applications, or have additional information about this procedure, please contact us by using the CONTACT US option in the  menu.