This past Monday, the Unicode Consortium had announced an update to the Unicode Standard, bringing the version up to 7.0 and introduced support for 2,834 new characters, especially those for new currencies, historic scripts, written languages for various regions etc., as well as 250 new emoji. It was the last bit that got the Internet most excited, particularly since the new characters included the likes of the infamous middle finger. Today, the Consortium has finally made available a full chart of all the new Emojis that have been added for our perusal.
The Unicode Consortium, the body that oversees and monitors the way in which text is presented throughout the software industry, has announced that 250 new emoji icons will soon be headed to the likes of iOS and Android, including, notably, the middle finger gesture.
Microsoft is known predominantly as a software maker, with the likes of Windows and Office among its most celebrated products. But for a long time, the company has also shown that it's not too shabby when it comes to building innovative keyboards and mice to accompany the experience of using its famed line-up, and moving with the times, the software company's new All-in-One Media Keyboard is designed specifically with your smart TV in mind.
When Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone way back in 2007, he made a real point of explaining why having an on-screen software keyboard was superior to using a hardware alternative. These days it seems obvious that having software keyboards means that we can customize that experience to the Nth degree, but six years ago it was a novelty. How times have changed.
We told you not that long ago that SwiftKey is potentially on its way to iOS via the SwiftKey Notes app, but if you're looking for a more system-wide approach to things then your only option is to spring for something that requires jailbreaking - at least until Apple sees the light and opens the door to truly customizable keyboards throughout iOS. With that unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, you might want to check out PredictiveKeyboard.
I'll make no bones about it: the iOS keyboard is, for me, an almighty pain in the rear. It seems to predate the rest of the operating system, and while iOS 7 is very advanced compared with the old days of iPhone OS, the keyboard is, by and large, unchanged. But thanks to the world of jailbreaking, those who like to type with some kind of fluidity can find some respite, and while there's not really anything like SwiftKey, there are a few tweaks, like a new entry over at the BigBoss repo called exKey, that promise to enhance the iOS keyboard feature.
The jailbreak may not have been perfect from the offset, but it at least managed to inspire and motivate some third-party developers into building some new packages to delight the jailbreak community. It's currently early days in terms of iOS 7 and 64-bit compatible tweaks, but early previews of a number of extensions, including the extremely useful Bloard, show that the future is bright for the jailbreak world.
So at this point it's no secret that iOS 7 on the iPad isn't exactly as well baked as it could be. Apple started the beta process for the iPad version of iOS 7 later than it did on the iPhone and iPod touch, and many had expected it to launch later too. Instead, Apple brought iOS 7 into the public domain across all its mobile devices simultaneously, leaving those running the software on a tablet with plenty of bugs to work with.
We’ve covered Kickstarter projects before such as the waterproof watch kit and today; we’re going to feature two of them. They are both keyboards, both aesthetic and both amazing ideas. We have no doubt that both products will receive the public funding they need for sale and distribution.
Not quite sold on the iPad's on-screen keyboard yet? Wish you could use your iPad just like a plain old 10-inch netbook? Thanks to this very elaborate external Bluetooth keyboard, you'll now be able to.
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