Swipe & Slide - Fast text entry

There were a flurry of news items recently on the introduction of a new fast input mechanism for touch screen devices. It is called "Swipe" and involves swiping your finger (or stylus) across a qwerty screen roughly over the letters that constitute the word. There is a similar product called "SlideIT" available for Windows Smart Phones. And yet another called "Inscribe" for UMPCs. And there is one called "ShapeWriter" for iPhones, Androids and Windows Mobiles.

The principles on which all of these are based - pattern recognition, identifying the characters, start and end characters, a dictionary... and similar stuff. A search for patents in this space gives quite a bit more insights. Here are a few:

• System and method for improved user input on personal computing devices
• Handheld electronic device with text disambiguation
• Reduced keyboards system using unistroke input and having automatic disambiguating and a recognition method using said system

SlideIT has a demo application that can be downloaded on to your PC. I tried it with a mouse, which was cumbersome. If you have a tablet with touch screen, it would give a more real feeling.