Swype away


Swype away - a reflection

 

It is old news, but I have recently, yes, only recently, got friendly with swype input, (as someone who has the word "technology" in his job title, the shame and dishonor such wilful neglect has brought upon my person is incalculable, but thanks to my new state of the art Android phone, I have the chance to turn this narrative of shame into a narrative of redemption, and nobody needs to commit hara kiri! 

 

Oh, and in case you do not yet know what Swype is, it is a word made up of swipe and type, it’s the input mode where your finger goes from B to E without stopping when typing the word, “because”.

 

I first came across the Swype technology at annual CSUN Conference on disability in 2011, but respectfully ignored it, because I figured that there's nothing swype can do that typing with auto-correction and/or word-prediction can't do faster. Strictly speaking, I wasn't far off; for someone with minor motor skills impairment, I could swype no more accurately than I could type, and if I was to use a stop watch, I am sure, I can type as fast, if not faster, than swype. But it only took less than a month of switching from iPhone 4S to Android Jelly Bean to turn me into a believer, even to the extent of searching for a non-existent tablet-like flat keyboard for my Windows 7 based PC, as well as hating the QWERTY keyboards that have been my friend for the last 25 years. (oh, loyalty can be so fleeting).

 

Why do I adore swyping so much, if it's not the speed? Well, here is the short version,  dragging the finger all over a virtual keyboard uses less muscles than traditional keyboard, especially for someone accustomed to type with 2 fingers, And that's it, that's the reason I am willing to divorce my qwerty keyboards. And the quickest way Microsoft can convince me to purchase a Surface RT tablet is if it tells me that I can use it as a swyping keyboard for my desktop computer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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