Tech

Let’s first start by saying that yes, my title for this post stinks.  Cut me some slack, its 5:30 in the morning.  Most who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know that I LOVE my android phone.  The Motorola Droid came along at just the perfect time for me.  My contract was up, I wanted more from my phone and the moon lined up with a certain oak tree in someone’s backyard.  It was meant to be.

I love everything about my phone.  It lets me listen to music, either on the phone like an iPod, read email, use my calendar, navigate turn by turn to someplace, take photos, videos, checks the balance of my Starbucks card, rotates my tires, does the dishes . . . ok ok. . so the last two are wishful thinking.  The point is someone has made an app for the android that can assist you in many day to day things.

The only drawback for me, and minor at that, has been the keyboard.  I have never done mass text entry into the phone because for me it still consisted of a labored exercise akin to pushing a small piece of uncooked rice around with the narrow end of a chopstick. It is a HUGE improvement over the old numerical keypad predictive text thing that drove me nuts for years, but still missing something.  Until now!

I was listening to a tech podcast this last week, for the life of me I can’t remember which one, and they mentioned the Swype Keyboard for Android.  Now for some reason that name stuck in my head.  I heard it somewhere.  Did some digging and found out it was in beta.  I signed up and fell in love!

The Swype keyboard replaces your onscreen keyboard.  First, for the Moto Droid, I love that it adds a more tactile feel to typing.  The phone clicks and vibrates with each press and it feels right.  I love Tanya’s keyboard on her Eris, now mine feels more like it. . But there is more!  Much more.

You can type very fast simply by swipeing your finger across the keys of the word you wish to spell.  For example, “apple”  just press the “a” key and hold it while you brush your finger across to the “p” then “l” then the “e”.  And just like that with some predictive work it prints “apple”.  AMAZING!

I sat up till 12:30 last night playing with my phone, almost like the first day I got it.  I was downloading apps and looking at all the other cool things I could do with it simply because I could type much, much faster on it.

Swype is in open beta right now. Don’t let that scare you off.  Sign up and give it a try.  I think you will love it.

Swype Text Inputs for Screens