Off the Mark by Mark Parisi for November 14, 2013

I give that invention two thumbs up!

My hands shake too much to operate small buttons on phones, especially touch screens.

Digits for igits.

Cute, but a bit out of date.

On a newer android phone with the right virtual keyboard, you can just slide the tip of your index finger from letter to letter, and it guesses what you want to type.

Some keyboards are better than others… I like “Swype”….You can download several to try.

It’s much faster than tapping out letters…and instead of those mini thumbs, large or clumsy fingers can just use a stylus.

I even have knit gloves with special fingertips that will work touch screens … and they came from the dollar store.

The little person called – they’d like their thumbs back!

The phone accessory I like is the one with an ear piece several inches away from the mouthpiece – so you can have a somewhat private conversation – attached by a curly cord to the device that sits on a table or phone stand.

With the advances in voice recognition lately, keyboards are going into the “quaint” category soon.

I have an Android, best slide typing keyboard ever… my wife has an iPhone 5, it is a POS, no matter which letter I think I am pressing, it always gets the one next to it… It is like using a blackberry.

Some years ago I was one of two people in the DVD/CD aisle at a store and she asked, “Which of these do I need?” I answered that it depended on what she wanted to do. She looked at me like I was nuts with a “Who asked you?” look.

I thought, “You did, Lady.”

A few moments later she asked another question and I thought, “Okay…” and answered it too.

Same look, more intense. I was expecting her to go anti-postal.

Then I noticed she had a cell phone in her hand and a cord running up to her ear.

As long as dumb phones are available I’ll have one. If texting is involved, I don’t do it. I don’t want to fall into an open manhole and make the evening news.

Mark, even with those tiny thumbs I’d be in trouble. But I see the younger set managing quite well and very rapidly. Cute cartoon. Thanks. You are one of my daily ‘must reads’.

Gosh, Mark… I didn’t mean to be a buzz kill.If you’re _ going_ to text on a mini keyboard with your thumbs, they’re still a great accessory.

But if you have too many, you can sell them to Gocomics users so we have a way to put thumbs up on comics.

I’ve heard you can use their little nails to make pictures…..

They’re also good to have around for when you want a little thumb thing to eat.

But be careful not to keep too many… I was warned the other day to watch out for the thumb tax.

In an update to Hans Christian Anderson’s story, the heroine is a doubter of global warming. It’s called Thumbelnina.