That's my only niggle, too - I'd like to be able to specify the layout of the suggested word panel, or just use the default Android one. For most words it's not an issue as Swype does a good job of getting it right without prompting a choice, but for smaller words this would greatly speed things up.
What would the input method be for a normal desktop? If it's touchscreen it sounds incredibly uncomfortable leaning forwards to "type", specially while operating the mouse with the other hand, especially since people tend to use their favoured hand for the mouse (so you'd be using your left hand to learn forward and type via the screen if you were right-handed, not nice). If you were going to hobble yourself that way, you may as well use the mouse as the Swype input, at least you could lean back and do that and it wouldn't require a fancy touchscreen interface, but really why do that when a traditional keyboard is so much faster and simpler?
No, where this would be more useful is tablets - being able to type up notes at a reasonable speed (bypassing flaky handwriting recognition or the need to type up your notes later) would make tablets a lot more usable than they are right now. Being able to type things up while on the train would make them a much more viable alternative to laptops/netbooks for some people (less space, you don't even need a knee to rest on, but still fairly accurate in a moving environment). Would also be useful for typing on any device with a "pointer" interface, such as the Wii.
It's probably not impossible to solve the multiple language issue with Swype, if there was sufficient interest for the developers to consider it. They already have a bunch of clever workarounds for things like capitalising words and doing punctuation, etc, there's no reason they couldn't give the ability to have a secondary and tertiary dictionary, favour the primary dictionary for most typing but you swype via this part of the screen to type a word in language B, that part in language C - sill not as great as having a full size physical keyboard but it'd be a reasonable compromise to gain speed and accuracy on a small device without giving anything up by having too many hits returned per word typed.
Actually, it's not - it will use whatever your standard dictionary is, so if you already have those words, Swype is happy to let you use them. Now, the basic Android dictionary probably doesn't come pre-loaded with your favourite expletives, but tell me, in what way does "doesn't come as part of the standard dictionary" equate to "you're not allowed to write those words"? You've never used a slang word that's not in the official dictionary? If you choose to limit your expression to words that are only in an official dictionary, you're doing the censoring yourself.
I'm sure you could, if you really wanted, find an expanded dictionary for Android with all of your "offensive" words pre-entered. If that's too much effort, then the process of "entering" them that you seem to find so onerous is that you... type them (as you would have to anyway), and if it's not recognised, you will be prompted with a list of suggestions, one of which will be your expletive, you just press it and it's saved. One extra keypress and thereafter you can swear away to your heart's content - if you can't be bothered to exert that much effort to overcome what you claim is "censorship" (and a quick character count suggests you could have added 139 expletives to your dictionary instead of typing the above post), then don't come here complaining about it.
I guess "A pen that refuses to write offensive thoughts, unless you press one button, one time only, thereafter it's fine" isn't such a great rallying call...
Additionally it still maintains the existing functionality of that existing keyboard. Know you're about to type a word that won't be in the dictionary, or that might get confused with too many other short words to be worth the effort? Just switch seamlessly between "swyping" and typing. It's a good example of intelligent use of the medium, rather than the alternative model at the moment of trying to shoe-horn in a solution that doesn't fit to cash in on the current popularity of touch-screen devices.
You're paying too much attention to the phone aspect. Not only is this application not just for phones (it might actually make tablets useful for writing up information on the move, for instance), it's great on the phone for email, making lists, taking down notes, etc. If you think this is unnecessary, you've probably not spent much time trying to enter text on small, touchscreen devices. Even on the "text" front, there are many instances where it might be preferable to send a text message than to make a call (if I'm in a meeting or don't want to disrupt the office, or I know the other person is similarly in a meeting, or I have too little signal to call, or I have a non-urgent piece of information to convey but don't want to risk waiting and forgetting, etc), and in those instance anything which simplifies the process is welcome. It also makes typing while travelling much easier - still no comparison to a physical key set under such circumstances, but the fact that it does an excellent job of interpreting your intentions even when the path described is only in the general vicinity of your actual letters, means you can still type accurately and at speed while in a moving car - something I found totally impossible with the default keyboard (the only way I could manage it was to brace my hand against the side of the screen to try and compensate for the movements of both, then very carefully hover into position over the key before a quick dab press - painful doesn't begin to sum it up).
Additionally, even on the "kthxby" issue, Swype does a reasonable job of recognising a lot of slang and anything like this that's not recognised initially can be added to the database (you just type it out using the same Swype interface but using it as a normal touchscreen keyboard - actually this is where the product's even more innovative because you keep the original functionality and Swype builds upon this), after which you get the same increased speed benefits. Purely anecdotal, but I did a test with "kthxby", it took around 2-2.5 seconds to type, but around a second to swype (and I'm still learning how it works) - that's not negligible over the course of an email!
Yes, I'm new to Swype (installed it on friday), but I got the impression from the Android forum where I read about this that Swype had been in beta on Android for a while, all that happened over the weekend was that the initial beta trial period ended so they opened the beta up again (so people who already had it could renew and people who didn't could get in on the action).
That said, it's great that the beta is open -- this way, I get to legally use Swype. Hopefully, some day, they'll actually let me pay for it -- I'd love to give these guys a few bucks.
Same here - I've only been using it over the weekend, but I already feel it's integral to the Android experience and that I'd hate to see it go away (if the beta expires and they decide not to re-issue). The sooner I can pay for this and know that it's mine for keeps, the better.
I've been trialling this since friday (HTC Desire) and I have to say I am incredibly impressed so far (and I'm not generally easily impressed). As you say, it's making predictions of what you intended to type, but it does so with - so far for me - an incredibly high hit-rate. It seems even if your trail misses a few letters, it still almost always suggest the correct word (and where it doesn't, it prompts you with a list like the standard predictive keyboard on the Desire, even then it's much faster to "swype" and correct than to type and correct). Punctuation seems to be my sticking point right now as it breaks the natural flow that lets you build up some incredible typing speeds (I'm sure this is my failing rather than the software's, there are some tips to help but I've yet to learn them instinctively). Overall it took me around 5 or 6 text messages to go from "what the hell is happening" to as fast as my previous (admittedly not massively quick being new to touch-screen keyboards on phones) typing speed.
I don't think people run air conditioning just to burn a set amount of energy. They run it to feel comfortable and if an advancement helps them reach that point more efficiently, all the better. There will be some edge cases (people who might otherwise not have turned on the air conditioning because they were only a little warm and it costs a lot to run), but overall if savings really are anywhere near 50-90% this should more than compensate for those cases. As other people have pointed out, there are bigger issues here than people just running the AC a little longer.
Unless I'm missing something, what you're suggesting is the opposite of replace the market - it's replacing the entire OS but trying to still use the market? The original point was, anyone can come along and write their own market app for Android, so even if the official one won't work with your Android flavour of choice, you can easily roll your own (of course it likely won't get far without either excellent marketing skills or a big budget, but that's an issue of product promotion in general and not limited to this instance).
The carriers are moving from "all you can eat" to limited data plans anyway. If they're still overselling capacity they don't have in a model where theoretically everyone knows exactly how much they're entitled to, that's their own problem - either increase prices and improve infrastructure or reduce the maximum data limits and stop promising people something that can't be delivered.
Exactly - the problem is not a lack of open OS solutions, the problem is that phone manufacturers and contract vendors want their own locks in place to stop people, for instance, only buying content once then easily taking it with them from phone to phone, or sharing data with people on other phones, or using their phone data package with their laptop, or any of the millions of other ways we could be better enjoying the technology if it didn't impinge on their given right to gouge us for functionality that should be free.
I guess the only issue would be explaining the name over the telephone in Spanish, but even then a simple explanation that it's the number spelled out as a word would suffice.
It does seem that, given the option, he would rather use "85" as his name. I'm pretty sure the reason he can't is a limitation on not allowing numbers in proper names by whatever body controls name registration in the US, so it's a valid point that the data systems don't handle the names people want to use. As more people become immersed in the internet, it's not unfeasible that this will come up more often, I can imagine some people thinking it would be a hoot to rename themselves to their online handle (and then wondering why nobody will hire someone legally named l337haxx0r85).
You would think so, yet two facts render your point moot. 1) I've encountered people with female names online, and 2) we know for a fact that everyone online is either a guy, a guy pretending to be a girl or an FBI agent. Therefore it's highly plausible that even a percentage of/.'s users are guys generating female personas.
I'm the same, faces for me just won't stick - the first few weeks going to a new employer is torture for me as I'll be bombarded with names and I just can't remember anyone, and of course the problem is multiplied because you're the new guy so everyone knows your name. I don't know if it's specifically a developer issue. I did read that people with borderline Asperger's find it difficult to recognise faces and a lot of developers I know seem to fit the patterns for that (awkward in social situations or around new people, like to collect things, etc) so maybe there's some correlation that people who fit those patterns are drawn to careers where they can focus on impenetrable logic problems and not have to deal with people too much (I know I'm making some massive generalisations here, and this is purely anecdotal, but it fits my observations).
Sometimes I despair when I read or hear somebody referring to eg. Djengis Khan as "Mr Khan" ("Khan" is a title, not a name) or even call Hu Jintao, "Mr Jintao"; you would have thought people would, by now, have caught on to the idea that something like half the world's population has the family name first.
Oh, come now - are you seriously saying you expect every single person to understand every subtle nuance of every other culture's use of titles and names? Here are some non-English equivalents to Mr., are you seriously telling us you know all of these? Here are the various forms of address in the UK alone, do you know all of these and every other culture's equivalent? How many of these should I learn before I go from being someone you despair of to someone you feel is welcome in your titular elite?
If half the world's population has the family name first, which half do I choose to offend when I don't know the exact rule for the home country of the person I'm speaking to? That's even assuming I know which country they're from. There's no reason to assume in this shrinking planet that someone who looks like they're from country A wasn't in fact born in country B to parents from countries A and C - a person born in Japan but with lineage in China might take great offence if I use Chinese honorifics to address him, surely it's better to be polite within the confines of my own known culture than to make such crass assumptions about his? The key thing I take from someone saying "Mr Khan" or "Mr Jintao" is that they're at least making the effort to communicate in a civil manner, which certainly causes me no despair.
I think this is more a data entry issue - that the person entering the data might spell the name in either way, and how far should the system go in compensating for that. The trouble is always that, once you start down that path, all you add is further confusion (why should the person entering the data even bother trying to figure out the correct spelling if they assume the system will figure it out anyway, leading to a spiral of the system having ever more convoluted rules and the meat-sack doing ever less to take the strain off). Better in the long term to just educate your data entry people on the importance of getting the spelling right.
I know we had a new developer start who's surname started with O', and while there was no problem getting him set up in the email system, his [name].o'[surname]@[address].com email address wouldn't work with a particular instance of Bugzilla we had to use (it just silently threw away the emails to him). Admittedly I've never met many people with names beginning with O', but I thought they were sufficiently common that most people would at least know of them and code accordingly.
Having said that - I can't imagine it would be prohibitively expensive to have both a sleep mode and a proper off switch. If I'm out for the weekend I'd like to be able to turn the device properly off without having to crawl around unplugging stuff.
Hmm, I prefer ads to be stripped out in the print stylesheet of the site I'm using. If I go to print a page of text and there's a big ad, I'll generally either script it out of the page or copy the text into a word processor and print it. If I script an ad out and my printer added it back in I'd certainly be more than a little annoyed.
Considering I use my printer maybe two or three times a year (it's stuck up in the loft out of the way I use it so little), I'd certainly notice if I went to use it and there was a big stack of printed ads and a flashing empty ink light, and my first action would be to replace the printer.
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That's my only niggle, too - I'd like to be able to specify the layout of the suggested word panel, or just use the default Android one. For most words it's not an issue as Swype does a good job of getting it right without prompting a choice, but for smaller words this would greatly speed things up.
What would the input method be for a normal desktop? If it's touchscreen it sounds incredibly uncomfortable leaning forwards to "type", specially while operating the mouse with the other hand, especially since people tend to use their favoured hand for the mouse (so you'd be using your left hand to learn forward and type via the screen if you were right-handed, not nice). If you were going to hobble yourself that way, you may as well use the mouse as the Swype input, at least you could lean back and do that and it wouldn't require a fancy touchscreen interface, but really why do that when a traditional keyboard is so much faster and simpler?
No, where this would be more useful is tablets - being able to type up notes at a reasonable speed (bypassing flaky handwriting recognition or the need to type up your notes later) would make tablets a lot more usable than they are right now. Being able to type things up while on the train would make them a much more viable alternative to laptops/netbooks for some people (less space, you don't even need a knee to rest on, but still fairly accurate in a moving environment). Would also be useful for typing on any device with a "pointer" interface, such as the Wii.
It's probably not impossible to solve the multiple language issue with Swype, if there was sufficient interest for the developers to consider it. They already have a bunch of clever workarounds for things like capitalising words and doing punctuation, etc, there's no reason they couldn't give the ability to have a secondary and tertiary dictionary, favour the primary dictionary for most typing but you swype via this part of the screen to type a word in language B, that part in language C - sill not as great as having a full size physical keyboard but it'd be a reasonable compromise to gain speed and accuracy on a small device without giving anything up by having too many hits returned per word typed.
Actually, it's not - it will use whatever your standard dictionary is, so if you already have those words, Swype is happy to let you use them. Now, the basic Android dictionary probably doesn't come pre-loaded with your favourite expletives, but tell me, in what way does "doesn't come as part of the standard dictionary" equate to "you're not allowed to write those words"? You've never used a slang word that's not in the official dictionary? If you choose to limit your expression to words that are only in an official dictionary, you're doing the censoring yourself.
I'm sure you could, if you really wanted, find an expanded dictionary for Android with all of your "offensive" words pre-entered. If that's too much effort, then the process of "entering" them that you seem to find so onerous is that you... type them (as you would have to anyway), and if it's not recognised, you will be prompted with a list of suggestions, one of which will be your expletive, you just press it and it's saved. One extra keypress and thereafter you can swear away to your heart's content - if you can't be bothered to exert that much effort to overcome what you claim is "censorship" (and a quick character count suggests you could have added 139 expletives to your dictionary instead of typing the above post), then don't come here complaining about it.
I guess "A pen that refuses to write offensive thoughts, unless you press one button, one time only, thereafter it's fine" isn't such a great rallying call...
Additionally it still maintains the existing functionality of that existing keyboard. Know you're about to type a word that won't be in the dictionary, or that might get confused with too many other short words to be worth the effort? Just switch seamlessly between "swyping" and typing. It's a good example of intelligent use of the medium, rather than the alternative model at the moment of trying to shoe-horn in a solution that doesn't fit to cash in on the current popularity of touch-screen devices.
You're paying too much attention to the phone aspect. Not only is this application not just for phones (it might actually make tablets useful for writing up information on the move, for instance), it's great on the phone for email, making lists, taking down notes, etc. If you think this is unnecessary, you've probably not spent much time trying to enter text on small, touchscreen devices. Even on the "text" front, there are many instances where it might be preferable to send a text message than to make a call (if I'm in a meeting or don't want to disrupt the office, or I know the other person is similarly in a meeting, or I have too little signal to call, or I have a non-urgent piece of information to convey but don't want to risk waiting and forgetting, etc), and in those instance anything which simplifies the process is welcome. It also makes typing while travelling much easier - still no comparison to a physical key set under such circumstances, but the fact that it does an excellent job of interpreting your intentions even when the path described is only in the general vicinity of your actual letters, means you can still type accurately and at speed while in a moving car - something I found totally impossible with the default keyboard (the only way I could manage it was to brace my hand against the side of the screen to try and compensate for the movements of both, then very carefully hover into position over the key before a quick dab press - painful doesn't begin to sum it up).
Additionally, even on the "kthxby" issue, Swype does a reasonable job of recognising a lot of slang and anything like this that's not recognised initially can be added to the database (you just type it out using the same Swype interface but using it as a normal touchscreen keyboard - actually this is where the product's even more innovative because you keep the original functionality and Swype builds upon this), after which you get the same increased speed benefits. Purely anecdotal, but I did a test with "kthxby", it took around 2-2.5 seconds to type, but around a second to swype (and I'm still learning how it works) - that's not negligible over the course of an email!
Yes, I'm new to Swype (installed it on friday), but I got the impression from the Android forum where I read about this that Swype had been in beta on Android for a while, all that happened over the weekend was that the initial beta trial period ended so they opened the beta up again (so people who already had it could renew and people who didn't could get in on the action).
That said, it's great that the beta is open -- this way, I get to legally use Swype. Hopefully, some day, they'll actually let me pay for it -- I'd love to give these guys a few bucks.
Same here - I've only been using it over the weekend, but I already feel it's integral to the Android experience and that I'd hate to see it go away (if the beta expires and they decide not to re-issue). The sooner I can pay for this and know that it's mine for keeps, the better.
I've been trialling this since friday (HTC Desire) and I have to say I am incredibly impressed so far (and I'm not generally easily impressed). As you say, it's making predictions of what you intended to type, but it does so with - so far for me - an incredibly high hit-rate. It seems even if your trail misses a few letters, it still almost always suggest the correct word (and where it doesn't, it prompts you with a list like the standard predictive keyboard on the Desire, even then it's much faster to "swype" and correct than to type and correct). Punctuation seems to be my sticking point right now as it breaks the natural flow that lets you build up some incredible typing speeds (I'm sure this is my failing rather than the software's, there are some tips to help but I've yet to learn them instinctively). Overall it took me around 5 or 6 text messages to go from "what the hell is happening" to as fast as my previous (admittedly not massively quick being new to touch-screen keyboards on phones) typing speed.
They need not concern with me. I've abandoned lead birdshot a long time ago. Now I do all my duck hunting using depleted uranium pellets.
Don't pass up the obligatory: "I don't go anywhere without my mutated anthrax. For duck huntin'."
I don't think people run air conditioning just to burn a set amount of energy. They run it to feel comfortable and if an advancement helps them reach that point more efficiently, all the better. There will be some edge cases (people who might otherwise not have turned on the air conditioning because they were only a little warm and it costs a lot to run), but overall if savings really are anywhere near 50-90% this should more than compensate for those cases. As other people have pointed out, there are bigger issues here than people just running the AC a little longer.
Unless I'm missing something, what you're suggesting is the opposite of replace the market - it's replacing the entire OS but trying to still use the market? The original point was, anyone can come along and write their own market app for Android, so even if the official one won't work with your Android flavour of choice, you can easily roll your own (of course it likely won't get far without either excellent marketing skills or a big budget, but that's an issue of product promotion in general and not limited to this instance).
The carriers are moving from "all you can eat" to limited data plans anyway. If they're still overselling capacity they don't have in a model where theoretically everyone knows exactly how much they're entitled to, that's their own problem - either increase prices and improve infrastructure or reduce the maximum data limits and stop promising people something that can't be delivered.
Exactly - the problem is not a lack of open OS solutions, the problem is that phone manufacturers and contract vendors want their own locks in place to stop people, for instance, only buying content once then easily taking it with them from phone to phone, or sharing data with people on other phones, or using their phone data package with their laptop, or any of the millions of other ways we could be better enjoying the technology if it didn't impinge on their given right to gouge us for functionality that should be free.
I guess the only issue would be explaining the name over the telephone in Spanish, but even then a simple explanation that it's the number spelled out as a word would suffice.
It does seem that, given the option, he would rather use "85" as his name. I'm pretty sure the reason he can't is a limitation on not allowing numbers in proper names by whatever body controls name registration in the US, so it's a valid point that the data systems don't handle the names people want to use. As more people become immersed in the internet, it's not unfeasible that this will come up more often, I can imagine some people thinking it would be a hoot to rename themselves to their online handle (and then wondering why nobody will hire someone legally named l337haxx0r85).
You would think so, yet two facts render your point moot. 1) I've encountered people with female names online, and 2) we know for a fact that everyone online is either a guy, a guy pretending to be a girl or an FBI agent. Therefore it's highly plausible that even a percentage of /.'s users are guys generating female personas.
I'm the same, faces for me just won't stick - the first few weeks going to a new employer is torture for me as I'll be bombarded with names and I just can't remember anyone, and of course the problem is multiplied because you're the new guy so everyone knows your name. I don't know if it's specifically a developer issue. I did read that people with borderline Asperger's find it difficult to recognise faces and a lot of developers I know seem to fit the patterns for that (awkward in social situations or around new people, like to collect things, etc) so maybe there's some correlation that people who fit those patterns are drawn to careers where they can focus on impenetrable logic problems and not have to deal with people too much (I know I'm making some massive generalisations here, and this is purely anecdotal, but it fits my observations).
Sometimes I despair when I read or hear somebody referring to eg. Djengis Khan as "Mr Khan" ("Khan" is a title, not a name) or even call Hu Jintao, "Mr Jintao"; you would have thought people would, by now, have caught on to the idea that something like half the world's population has the family name first.
Oh, come now - are you seriously saying you expect every single person to understand every subtle nuance of every other culture's use of titles and names? Here are some non-English equivalents to Mr., are you seriously telling us you know all of these? Here are the various forms of address in the UK alone, do you know all of these and every other culture's equivalent? How many of these should I learn before I go from being someone you despair of to someone you feel is welcome in your titular elite?
If half the world's population has the family name first, which half do I choose to offend when I don't know the exact rule for the home country of the person I'm speaking to? That's even assuming I know which country they're from. There's no reason to assume in this shrinking planet that someone who looks like they're from country A wasn't in fact born in country B to parents from countries A and C - a person born in Japan but with lineage in China might take great offence if I use Chinese honorifics to address him, surely it's better to be polite within the confines of my own known culture than to make such crass assumptions about his? The key thing I take from someone saying "Mr Khan" or "Mr Jintao" is that they're at least making the effort to communicate in a civil manner, which certainly causes me no despair.
I think this is more a data entry issue - that the person entering the data might spell the name in either way, and how far should the system go in compensating for that. The trouble is always that, once you start down that path, all you add is further confusion (why should the person entering the data even bother trying to figure out the correct spelling if they assume the system will figure it out anyway, leading to a spiral of the system having ever more convoluted rules and the meat-sack doing ever less to take the strain off). Better in the long term to just educate your data entry people on the importance of getting the spelling right.
I know we had a new developer start who's surname started with O', and while there was no problem getting him set up in the email system, his [name].o'[surname]@[address].com email address wouldn't work with a particular instance of Bugzilla we had to use (it just silently threw away the emails to him). Admittedly I've never met many people with names beginning with O', but I thought they were sufficiently common that most people would at least know of them and code accordingly.
Having said that - I can't imagine it would be prohibitively expensive to have both a sleep mode and a proper off switch. If I'm out for the weekend I'd like to be able to turn the device properly off without having to crawl around unplugging stuff.
Hmm, I prefer ads to be stripped out in the print stylesheet of the site I'm using. If I go to print a page of text and there's a big ad, I'll generally either script it out of the page or copy the text into a word processor and print it. If I script an ad out and my printer added it back in I'd certainly be more than a little annoyed.
Considering I use my printer maybe two or three times a year (it's stuck up in the loft out of the way I use it so little), I'd certainly notice if I went to use it and there was a big stack of printed ads and a flashing empty ink light, and my first action would be to replace the printer.
Of course it's pretty moot when replacing the ink costs more than just replacing the printer (and getting free ink).