Move over T9, here comes Swype

The first thing that came to mind when I saw this preso was "What algorithm are they using to find the words?" The problem looks something like: Given a string of characters, find all possible words that start and end like the string of characters and use any number of characters in between.<p>The best I can come up (after not so much thinking about it) with is using Bloom Filters. Precompute the bit vector for every word in your dictionary, then after they swype, compute a vector for the string of characters and run it up against all the words in your dictionary that start and end with the same letters. Still kind of an expensive linear search, albeit fast (since it's just boolean AND).

They just need to work on getting consumers educated more than T9 did. It's amazing how many times I have explained and demo'd T9 to people--vast numbers of people just don't get it and use multi-tap instead. After a couple of minutes T9 is way faster, but there is usually no tutorial and people get frustrated when it's not doing what they think it should (multitap).

the iphone app "writingPad" uses this input method

qwerty evenly spreads commonly used keys between both sides so that you can type fast with two hands; seems like exactly what you wouldn't want with this tech.

I saw the demo live and it looked great with a stylus... so-so with touch and worse on a phone. Still has work to do.

Definitely innovative, though I wonder if not lifting fingers from the screen helps all that much.

I watched this live at Techcrunch50 and I had mixed reactions. First, it is a rather technically interesting way to do text input. Watching how the experienced developer was playing with it, I could sense how it could feel like writing cursive English letters as whole words.<p>For the average user though, I just don't see how it catches on. People are fairly split over whether they prefer phones with traditional button keyboards or if they love the touchscreen interface from the iPhone. I love the iPhone because I hated stencils. I get more screen real estate. Its easier for me to do typing on the iPhone than any other smart phone I ever used.<p>It honestly looked like the demonstrator was scribbling on the screen. I had to look twice a couple of times to make sure it was a live demo and not fake.

Not a fan at all. I understand how the creator might have put pressure on himself to develop a new relevant solution, but this is nothing short of counterintuitive. Why would you develop a text input method that forces the user to use one finger?