Photo: Rethinking the keyboard

Software being developed by Microsoft Research is designed to allow consumers using handhelds to search online by punching in abbreviations and truncated spellings. Another approach, called Xnav, allows users to select letters using a keyboard like the one shown here. Consumers would use a combination of double-clutching and hovering over certain spaces to create letters and punctuation marks.

Photo by Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com