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Is Swype like ShapeWriter?

Fring is just a front-end. It coalesces contact in one place and uses any xport layer you desire.

If you want swype capability, how about checking this out?

http://www.shapewriter.com/software.html#android

http://lifehacker.com/5344955/get-a-better-android-keyboard-no-rooting-required

One thing that Courier nails is the concept of using both fingers and pen. Go ahead, try it. There are two basic pen positions: a "writing" position that uses all five fingers, and a "resting" position where the pen is rotated 90 degrees, and held in place by a single finger, leaving the other fingers free. The writing position is vertical, resting on the edge of the hand. The resting position is horizontal, palm down.

The Courier UI mockup uses both of these hand configurations and orientations. Flat, horizontal motions such as flipping a page or image dragging are done in the resting position. Vertical motions such as drawing and writing are done in writing position. Switching between the two is very fast and natural-feeling.

Having a pen dispenses with the need for a QUERTY keyboard, but block-printing is not the solution either. For one thing, it's too slow: the average printing speed is about 15wpm. A better solution might be a stylus-based keyboard. Several years ago, IBM invented a shorthand named Shark (commercialized as ShapeWriter, I believe) that was extremely effective. After just a few minutes of practice with it, I was able to achieve 40wpm.

It is still wasted space and adds considerable thickness to the phone, not to mention making it more fragile, both to impact and liquids. Above all though, there are much better input methods for a handheld device than a shrunken conventional keyboard!

Most of the people who are attached to physical keyboards are simply creatures of habit. Unfortunately, existing physical and virtual keyboards (as on the iPhone) are targeted at people who are averse to change, even if they are both far from optimal.

ShapeWriter is the commercialization of IBM's SHARK project, which pioneered the concept. ShapeWriter runs on iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, and Windows PC. Downloads Here.

For example, would it type my username as Goobermunch or Gobermunch? How would it know the difference? How does Swyping accommodate the William Wallaces of the world? Are they doomed to being Wiliam Walaces?

I don't know about Swype, but when using Shapewriter, an iPhone notepad application that works (suspiciously) similar as other have pointed out, you just ignore double letters. I just tried "William Wallace" on ShapeWriter by tracing "Wiliam Walace" and it came out just fine. If there is an ambiguity between two valid words ("planner" and "planer"), they'll both be shown in a pick list from which you just select the right one.

The technology relies on a dictionary, so it won't recognise words such as your username until you add it manually.

Perhaps, if you dwell for a sufficiently long period of time, it will count the character beneath the stylus twice.

Someone else mentioned looping around a letter to make it a double, which beats waiting. I seriously detest any input method that makes me wait, like the Multitap input on old pre-T9 cell phones, where you'd have to wait a second before hitting the "3" key again to type a double "e" (else you'd just get an "f")

I would think that, since this input method is based on moving a finger between letters in a continuous motion, it would probably be a Good Thing if commonly used letters were far apart, or far enough apart to make each character entered a long enough "swipe" to feel natural and ergonomic.

I am a bit curious about how you were to type a word like "letter," where you need to make 2 "Ts" at once. Maybe after you enter the first T, you do a little loop and end up where you started.

You can, by the way, get a writing app for your iPhone now that operates on this principle.

Actually for this thing, there's probably a whole new layout that's optimal. (That's an exercise for the reader to invent.)

The guys over at ShapeWriter have already beaten you (me?) to it.

They call it the ATOMIK keyboard layout, and there's a short demo here. The learning curve is probably a little steep, but I would guess that it's less than learning QWERTY, partly because you're allowed to look at the keyboard the entire time. :)

i've been using the writingpad iphone app for months that does just this.
http://www.shapewriter.com/iphone.html

Take a look at this demo of ShapeWriter from IBM. It's the same thing as Swype and was invented 5 years ago. Dr Zhai has formed a company around the tech and you can see it here: ShapeWriter.

I've had an iPhone application for quite a while that uses this. It's called WritingPad, and the about screen has a link to http://shapewriter.com/.