TextInput
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Google Translate homepage adds handwriting input, makes sense of your atrocious penmanship
Mountain View's machine translation service does a pretty good job of sussing out the meaning of copy / pasted text from around the web, but what if you need to translate something you can't put your cursor on? Google's got that covered too: handwriting input. Users of the tool's mobile app have been able to manually write in characters for some time now, but the company has only recently implemented this feature on the Google Translate website -- making it easy to input text that falls outside outside of the standard standard roman character set. After scrawling your best Kanji-replica with a mouse, Google will offer users its best guess at the intended characters, which, when selected, drop into the translate box. Of course, don't blame Google if your writing illegibly sloppy. Check out the company's blog post at the source link below.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich review
The next version of each smartphone's operating system is always the best. We impatiently wait for the latest and greatest firmware to come around, expecting it to liberate us from the shackles of last year's code and features that haven't shown up yet. This happens incessantly with Google's Android OS, and version 4.0 -- unveiled at this year's I/O conference in May -- is no different. Known as Ice Cream Sandwich (referred to henceforth as ICS), the last word in the title indicates the merging of Gingerbread, the most recent phone platform, and Honeycomb, the version optimized for use on tablets. We knew this much, but were otherwise left with conjecture as to how the company planned to accomplish such a feat -- and what else the new iteration had in store. Which devices will get Ice Cream Sandwich? Hands-on screenshot gallery Galaxy Nexus and ICS roundup But now the time of reckoning is upon us, and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus -- Android 4.0's mother ship -- is slowly spreading across the globe, its users being treated to this year's smartphone dessert. ICS is one of the largest and most important upgrades we've witnessed from Android since its humble beginnings, making a huge change in user experience as well as a massive number of bullet points on the list of features. Now that we've had the opportunity to take it for a spin, where does it stand in the ranks of mobile operating systems? Follow us beneath as we dig into the layers of this sweet sandwich.
Circboard brings fast typing to console controllers (video)
Entering any kind of text using a console gamepad is an exercise in frustration. Certain games have offered innovative solutions, like Beyond Good and Evil's infinitely spiraling letters, but none quite as simple as Circboard. It basically splits the keyboard into bunches, with the left analog stick on an Xbox 360 controller selecting a group of letters and then the right stick or buttons grabbing a specific letter. Shoulder bumpers handle space and backspace, while the left trigger does caps. Simple, easy -- and as of now just a demo. But, the team is looking to get its idea into a variety of games and other console apps, and they're looking for investors. You always did say that mutual funds were boring... Update: Alfredo wrote in with some prior art that might make patenting this approach somewhat... difficult.
T9 Trace lets you Swype through your text messages
You may or may not yet be aware of the Swype virtual keyboard (comes preloaded on the Cliq XT from Motorola), but you'll definitely be hearing about the T9 Trace from Nuance. This is because, although it's fundamentally the same thing as Swype (but from a different maker), the T9 Trace is on offer from the company behind the T9 predictive text dictionary that pretty much everyone from your 7-year old nephew to your octogenarian grandpa has used. The big idea here is that you trace out the word on your virtual keyboard without lifting your finger off, with short stops at each letter you want to add being taken for input. Once you get over the seemingly unintuitive idea of abandoning those woodpecker taps for the grace of tracing, it promises to be a real fun and rapid way to input text. Nuance has bundled the whole thing with error correction, word prediction and auto-completion, while supporting 70 languages. The company has yet to tell us when the T9 Trace will be showing up on phones (touchscreens only, for obvious reasons), but you can check out video of the competing Swype implementation after the break.
Pen input faces off against hardware and software QWERTY keyboards: there can be only one (maybe)
It's completely anecdotal and lacking in what some might call "scientific rigor," but we're digging the, ahem, relevance of Phil Gyford's little text input faceoff he performed for his blog recently. The piece pits an Apple Newton, Palm Vx, Treo 650, and Apple iPhone up against each other, with regular pen and paper and a laptop's full QWERTY keyboard thrown in for reference. The results may or may not surprise you, but (spoiler alert) after the MacBook Pro took top honors in blazing through a 221 word passage twice, the iPhone beat out the rest of the competition, with the three pen-related inputs (pen and paper, Newton MessagePad and Palm Graffiti) all taking up dead last. The iPhone, Treo and pen and paper all were relatively close in speed, and naturally your mileage may vary. That said, where do you think you fall? Drop in your results in comments (the full text he used can be found at the source link) or hit up the poll below with your best guestimate. We're dying to know! %Poll-40521%
Accelerometer-dependent text entry patent from HTC sounds like more trouble than it's worth
We're all for closing the gap between our desktop and mobile WPMs, but this might be a step in the wrong... direction (keep reading to understand why that was a miserable, unforgivable pun). HTC has filed for a patent that would have your phone determine which character you meant to type by analyzing its current tilt at the time you press a key, the idea being that a single key could be responsible for entering as many as five different letters and numbers. It seems like that'd make entering a text more like a game of Labarynth than an actually enjoyable (or efficient) process, but hey, we guess some people are really good with their wrists. [Via pocketnow.com and wmpoweruser.com]
Clove 2 typing glove leaves your other hand free for high fives
Have no fear, we're always on the hunt for new and innovative ways to boost your bombdigity quotient, and we've really found just the thing this time around. The Clove 2 interfaces with your computer over Bluetooth, and through a strange set of tapping gestures (that sort of remind us of that one Daft Punk video), allows you to type one-handed, sans keyboard. Seems like quite the learning curve, but we're sure it's totally worth it in the end. Four words per minute never looked so good. Video is after the break.[Via Hack a Day]
TwoStick text entry system speeds up console keyboarding
While it seems like voice chat has taken over as the dominant trash-talk medium for online console gaming, there's still a lot of tedious onscreen keyboarding to be done -- entering Wii friend codes leaps to mind, for one. With any luck, those chores will be made easier in the future with the TwoStick system recently developed in Vienna. The system assigns characters to a Sodoku-like 9x3 grid, letting the user select a quadrant with the left stick and select a letter from within the quadrant with the right. According to the developers, TwoStick users are around 2 words per minute faster than regular on-screen keyboarders after just a little practice. No word on if we might see the system hit the current-gen systems, but we're definitely holding out hope for the 720 and PS4. Peep a video of TwoStick in action after the break.[Via Joystiq]
Xbox 360 controller keyboard out in the wild
The folks over at the Gamerscore Blog posted additional pictures of the newly announced Xbox 360 text input peripheral. The pictures show off how the device plugs into the controller, how it's shaped, and how comfortable it'll be when connected. The curvature and look seems odd at first, but fits snugly into the 360 controller almost as if they were separated at birth and are finally reunited. It's also interesting to note that the text input device will be back lit and include a separate headset to plug into the device. A complete set of new pictures are viewable after the jump.
