Michael Kanellos takes a look at some of the new keyboards hitting the streets and offers his opinions. He is currently working with the Frogpad (the one pictured) and admits to it being a little difficult to learn.

The FrogPad’s main design feature is that it plays off the natural strength of the human hand. The most common word in English–”the“–is typed by drumming the three middle fingers of your hand. Typing “then” involves dropping the middle finger to hit N. The vowels can all be hit by the index finger, the strongest finger on the hand.

The greatest hurdle that these new keyboards face is the fact that how many people (besides us geeks) are willing to learn a whole new typing paradigm? It takes many people a long time just to learn QWERTY keyboards and to have to learn something different doesn’t quite makes sense.