SwiftKey

Also features A few*** weeks ago I installed Swype on my droid and promptly posted a boot blog post from my phone using the new keyboard.  It went reasonably well,  but it caused me to accidentally submit the post halfway through.

Nevertheless,  Swype quickly became my preferred input method on my phone.  Until tonight.

Tonight I installed SwiftKey.  SwiftKey is much more like a regular keyboard in that you type your letters (rather than draw a path over the letters, like in Swype), but the HUGE differentiator that SwiftKey brings to the table is that it predicts the NEXT word you're going to type.  Let me say that again: SwiftKey predicts the NEXT word you're going to type!  It does this through a combination of statistical analysis of the language of your choice and what you have typed in the past.  Rather than merely working reasonably well,  SwiftKey really works REMARKABLY well.  So well in fact that it predicted each of the last seven words in the sentence I repeated above.

Not only that, but it also works with the Droid's slide out keyboard,  bringing the best of tactile and predictable typing together.

This is a good one,  and a worthy installation for any (an)droid user out there.   Let's hope it's not too expensive when it comes out of beta.

PS!  Would love to see this on an iPad.

***Update: nothing like raving about a new keyboard, and then starting with two incorrectly auto-completed words.  Links added post hoc in Live Writer – still the best blogging tool (for Windows at least)…

 

PPS: Video of SwiftKey in action:

SwiftKey vs Standard Keyboard

SwiftKey vs Swype–a very close call, though the Swyper is hardly using Swype to its fullest.

Yet another pre-stolen idea: the electric supercharger

In my not-too-consistent series of “pre-stolen ideas”, here’s another from the automotive front: the electric supercharger, as part of EcoMotors’ new engine design.

Based on my unused mechanical engineering degree, AFAIK, some of the drawbacks of a supercharger are the additional engine friction it provides, and the fact that the boost provided is directly related to engine speed. Since you only really need the additional boost some of the time, my thought was - why not control boost with a near-zero lag electric motor whose output is completely independent from that of the main engine?  Which is of course what EcoMotors is now doing.

Volkswagen is using a twincharger design in their latest creation – a 1.4 liter engine that produces as much power as V6 engines twice the size did a decade or so ago.  EcoMotors seem to have done VW one better, enough for Bill Gates to invest in the company.

Norwegian Cinema At Its Finest

Java 4 Ever

Java 4-Ever - Vidéos insolites

(thanks, Steve)

Bing Bar Begone

I rarely use Firefox anymore, because it takes forever and a half to launch (I should figure out why that is…).  Anyhow, I started it today, just to find the frickin’ Bing bar taking up new real estate.  Where did that come from?

Mozilla support has the answer: https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Removing+the+Search+Helper+Extension+and+Bing+Bar

This is the kind of crap that Old Microsoft would do.  With all the recent goodness coming out of Redmond, I really didn’t expect this.  Bad Microsoft, bad.

Uninstalled.