Instant Text Mobile for Palm OS

Textware Solutions has announced Instant Text Mobile for Palm OS. The new program offers a very fast and accurate solution for those who use a PDA for text-entry: composing emails, taking notes or preparing documents. The program makes text-entry so much easier that it is very likely to encourage many users to do a larger share of their text-entry work directly on the PDA, rather than on a desktop computer.

Textware is a leading supplier of solutions for very fast text-entry, with Instant Text for Windows – the leading text expander solution in Medical Transcription – and the Fitaly keyboards on Palm Powered and Windows Mobile PDAs. The Windows version of Instant Text was the first program to put the power of Textware’s proprietary “Jump Ahead” technology at PC users’ fingertips, enabling them to enter only a few letters and then quickly select desired words and phrases from a list. This same capability is now made available to those who use Palm OS devices.

“With Instant Text Mobile, a thought which may take 1/10 of a second to form, three seconds to say, and six to ten seconds to type will now take just under a second to enter on a PDA,” said Jean Ichbiah, president of Textware Solutions. “The PDA has always been the most natural place to take notes and compose emails because it is always with you. Now it is also one of the quickest and most accurate means of text entry as Instant Text Mobile delivers a very fast way from thought to text."

With other input technologies, it is often difficult to keep up while taking notes on a handheld. Many users end up using cryptic notes and a variety of abbreviations created on the spot to speed up the process. The resulting documents are often difficult, if not impossible, to understand afterwards—often by their own authors.

Instant Text Mobile lets users enter fully intelligible words and phrases with only a few letters, while never requiring users to memorize predefined abbreviations. A user just enters a few letters and Instant Text flashes choices of complete words and phrases. Thus, the letters trf, tfo, trfo, tfm, tft, tftion, among others, will produce the word "transformation" as a choice, and therefore, there is no need to remember any shortcut. Any of those combinations works and a single tap enters the word on the PDA.

But words are just one "expansion" by Instant Text. As letters are being entered, they may also produce a phrase. In an attorney's glossary, for example, "natc" typed right in the middle of a sentence might yield a word like "naturalistic" but also the phrase "notwithstanding anything to the contrary," a phrase identified from the first letters of different words. The use of phrases results in major keystroke savings. For that reason, the glossaries supplied with Instant Text Mobile contain thousands of phrases that are frequently used in everyday letters, memos, and emails: phrases such as “I would like to receive,” “you are going to,” “on the other hand,” “whether or not,” and “for your review.” Instant Text Mobile also includes a very easy-to-use interface, making it simple to add new phrases to a glossary within seconds.

Instant Text Mobile is available at Textware Solutions, for US$29. An introductory price of $25 applies until the end of September.

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Great application

trophyofgrace @ 5/23/2005 9:24:41 PM # Q
I was a beta tester of this product. It's great. I'm working on a review of it for my site, handsonreviews.com. It's a lot like Google Suggest.

"I may die a failure, but I refuse to die a quitter"
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Another One

sford @ 5/24/2005 12:03:01 AM # Q
How does this compare to TextComplete, QuickWrite, and all the other apps that do this?

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RE: Another One
NeilG @ 5/24/2005 1:00:20 AM # Q
No comparison, give it a try.

RE: Another One
justauser @ 5/24/2005 2:00:23 AM # Q
First impressions are;

1. It slows down my graffiti recognition while it's thinking about alternatives. Just slightly, but enough to frustrate me.

2. My problems with this (and other) text input helps is that it forces you to look at your PDA while inputing text. One of the great strengths of graffiti is that you don't have to move your hand - you can look anywhere if you keep your hand in the right spot. ie at a presentation you can be looking at the speaker while jotting down notes.

3. I find myself constantly pausing to scan the bottom of the screen every second character to see if my word has come up. When my word isn't there, this kinda slows things down. I imagine with some training to the app, these pauses would be less frequent and a larger glossary would yield more exhaustive results.

I like the concept as it forces correct spelling. The feel of it is similar to auto-word completion in Openoffice (a feature that I like). For a new user to Palm struggling with graffiti, this application would be a God-send.

RE: Another One
grahamnind @ 5/25/2005 3:20:23 AM # Q
TextPlus seems to do the same thing but without the timelag and it's cheaper
http://www1.smartcell.com/web/products/product.aspx?id=4

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Not bad

neurojava @ 5/25/2005 5:15:29 PM # Q
Just bought Instant Text on an impulse. While I agree with a previous commenter on the fact that it initially has a tendency to slow you down - with a bit of practice - it does actually help a lot during fast input.

Was in a meeting today and had to make a bunch of entries in the calender. 5 times out of 7, Instant text recognized the phrase correctly - so I am not unhappy.



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