http://www.techfav.com

http://www.techfav.com

Eb, I don’t know if the IBM folks plan a PDA version or not. I suspect it’s likely more resource related than anything else. It’s a free program and supporting multiple versions is likely out of the scope of possibility for the authors.

Hey JK,

Great article! I keep reading a lot of material about this ShapeWriter method of sliding the pen… but so far no PDA or SmartPhones that i know of have incorporated it! Am I wrong? And if not, do you have any idea why (technology is too heavy for a PDA, no demand, else ?)

Thanks for the feedback,
Eb, ebiwan@yahoo.com

One problem for me with shark is, that it doesn’t work in German. In English it’s somehow hard to use for me and text recognition works much better and faster…

I’m using a phone pad on pocket PC 2003 SE and it works great, QWERTY is not so good, my handwriting is too poor for recognition could never get on with grafitti or similar, but the T9 pad as they call it with predictive text I am quicker than my old texting speed which was very quick. Would like to try Shark at some point though. Looks like it could be as good.

I tried MessageEase with great frustration. After watching their demo video I figured “even if I could become as fast the person doing the demo – who is likely the fastest person they could find – it’s still not fast enough for me”.

I haven’t tried SHARK but will now. Has anyone found an application that simulates a phone keypad for text entry like on cell phones? call me crazy, but i’m extremely fast on text entry on my cell phone and would love to apply that to text entry on my tablet.

I have posted a visual comparison of Fitaly and Atomik, using the text from the Dom Perignon IV contest, here: http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2005/01/flickr-vs-atomik-words-from-dom.html

I’ve tried both for a week each, and there’s just something about Fitaly that makes it more comfortable for me personally. Strange.

cleverly designed and useful. The lexicon is somewhat limited (even the word “lexicon” is not in the lexicon!) but the ability to add to it by importing text fills is handy.

I use a usb connected tablet to my laptop, as I have RSI, and since using SHARK for the first time on the weekend have become an instant convert. SHARK is extremely easy to pick up, and the accuracy is phonomenal. Even with my cheaper and not-so-accurate stylus I have not had to correct the program after the first hour of use. It is quicker and more accurate to use than voice rec or any other similar stylus based software. I think it’s amazing that even a beta version could be so complete in functionality, and best of all, absolutely free!

There are a few gripes or changes I would suggest, however there are minor and do not affect the program’s functionality in any major way. The first is that getting the software to run the first time was a bit of a challenge until I realized that I had to move the exe file into the other directory. Help for this, and other functions (such as how to transfer the text into other programs) was sketchy. I also noticed that when typing, some words or sentences would get lost during the overflow. Apostrophes, and not being able to highlight letters to correct case is a minor inconvienence. My other gripe is the amount of screen space this takes up. I think having a transparency option, and/or adding the usual “minimize, restore” buttons to the status bar would make this program truly fantastic. I have been able to resize the window (and the keys!) by clicking and dragging the window, but I have found that IBM have been spot on with the default key sizes. Any smaller and it becomes difficult to be accurate. All in all an excellent program. Very much looking forward to the next version!

Thanks Wayne for adding your useful information.

Hi, I just wanted to add to the thread. I have tried messagease quite a bit and can tell you that, in my opinion, SHARK is much faster and easier to use. I had been beta testing SHARK previous to its release and to programmers at IBM really have done their research. It is wonderful to finally be able type quickly and accurately.
My email is vandegraaff@gmail.com and I would be happy to answer any questions.
Also, thank you so much jk for doing this review, it’s wonderful!

By the way, here is the link to download java
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp
and when you unzip the shark file you need to put the shark.exe in the shark folder and then click on it, like jk said.

Pat, I have never tried MessageEase mainly because it looked like the learning curve was too great like most of these input schemes. SHARK worked quickly for me so I like it. And did I mention before that it’s free?

JK,
Have you tried MessageEase? I too am a long time Fitaly user who wants something similar on my soon-to-arrive tablet. MessageEase and Shark look the most promising.

Pat

DoC, glad to see you got it working. The New York Times has an article about SHARK today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/technology/circuits/11next.html?oref=login

I had to move the shark.exe into the shark subdirectory and then it worked flawlessly.