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Tegic, the owners of t9 started filing patents in 1996, http://www.tegic.com/about/patent-leadership.asp

I didn't read through all the patents but I'm pretty sure worldlogic doesn't have anything on tegic when it comes to the cell phone industry.
just one obvious example of why these patents shouldn't have been granted in the first place..

here's the original t9 patent for reference: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?u=%2Fnet ahtml%2Fsrchnum.htm&Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&r= 1&l=50&f=G&d=PALL&s1=5187480.PN.&OS=PN/5187480&RS= PN/5187480

The technology to which you refer is T9, by Tegic Communications.

Thanks! Do you know of anything that combines something like T9, only for the palm? T9+TextPlus would be the ultimate in text input for the palm. I might even be able to get up to (slow) typing speeds.

The technology to which you refer is T9, by Tegic Communications.

It's what I use on my Nokia 6210 and it's great, user dictionary entries and multiple languages mean even my French is spelt correctly ;o)

Exactly the same system (Tegic's T9 Predictive Text Entry) is appearing in newer cellphones (my Nokia 3210 has it) for typing SMS messages. It works very well, and once you get used to it you can almost touchtype. It's a heck of a lot easier than normal cellphone text entry, which to my mind looks like you're playing Track + Field as you hammer at the buttons to cycle round letters :)

Um, yeah. Most current cell phones available here (Sweden) are equipped with a piece of software called T9 (by Tegic), which does right about that. It's not smart enough to be history-sensitive in the way you describe, but rather works against a fixed (but extensible) dictionary. It works fairly well in practice, and helps you write SMS messages using only 11 or so keys...

Not if you've got a newer phone.
Lots of new phones come with predictive text input which lets you press each key just once, and it predicts what word you're typing based on a built in dictionary. Much quicker.

Text-messaging is great: the US is really missing out. I find it indispensible for several reasons. Firstly its great if you're in a noisy bar or club, where its impossible to hear a phone. Secondly its cheap: i pay £.06p ($.09) per message, as opposed to £.30p/min to call another network mobile.
Lastly, and most importantly, texting is great for flirting. Little mesages that you'd never dream of saying by voice, are somehow easier to say by text!

For those of you who think spelling things with up to four presses of a digit, see www.tegic.com. They use dictionary and probability data to shorten,

• 22
• B 666O 777R 444I 66N 4G

into,

• 2
• B 6O 7R 4I 6N 4G

I thought it was clever, and the website has a scenario demonstration.

Still not quite the way I would play Spellbreaker, though. "Frotz me!"