222 Personal Content Experience: Managing Digital Life in the Mobile Age text. In some cases, such as Palm’s Graffi ti (Palm b), the drawing of characters is simplifi ed and they can be formed with one stroke of the stylus. Devices with a touch sensitive screen also support so-called virtual keyboards, where a keypad is drawn on the screen and the user can tap its keys with the stylus or the fi nger (7710; Palm; P990i). In addi- tion, handwriting recognition can be used for distinguishing gestures drawn on the screen in order to perform a predetermined action. Also the device’s embedded camera may be used for recognizing handwrit- ten or printed characters (Motorola Ming). Recently, using the mechanics of the device as input has become commonplace. For example, as the user opens the clamshell device and twists the screen, the device will go from the idle state to the capture image state, as with Nokia N93 (Figure 6-2). Different kinds of sensors may also be used for input. For instance, devices targeted at sports often contain embedded motion sensors, such as a 3D accelerometer for monitoring the step count. In many cases, the accelerometer also doubles as an input device for detecting some predefi ned gestures, such as tapping the screen with a fi nger. Similarly, GPS satellite positioning provides implicit input about the user’s current location (for more discussion on GPS and location, refer to section 7.2). Selecting, or pointing or clicking an item is often a prerequisite for further interaction. There are two primary pointing methods: direct and indirect. In direct pointing, the user can point an arbitrary single spot on the screen, for instance, with a stylus and a touch screen. In indirect pointing, the user manipulates a separate input device, such as cursor keys or a joystick, in order to move the visual selection indi- cator. As a consequence, indirect pointing requires good hand-eye coordination and cognitive processing, since the brain has to inter - pret the changes on screen and control the hand at the same time (Shneiderman 1998). Selection can be done by hardware keys, such as a softkey, a dedi- cated selection key, centre selection in 5-way joystick, or a stylus. There are also ways to enhance the selection and associate different operations with it. For example, the operation linked to a button differs depending on how, or how long, the user presses the key. The most common selection methods are a single press, a long press (the key is pressed down for more than a predetermined period of time), and double press, where two consecutive single presses are made during a certain period of time. Occasionally, the user needs to select more than one item, referred to as multi-selection. With an indirect pointing device, this task requires the user to switch to a special selection mode, where they can toggle