I wasn't able to the setting pages on Chrome while I was signed in. Am I blind or was this a UI oversight?
On the bottom of the search homepage.
Google Handwrite
51–60 of 80 posts
Re: Google Handwrite
#52Fun feature. Would be killer with support for non-latin based language. Imagine walking down a street in Japan, seeing a restaurant, and wanting to search for reviews. Oh no! It's written in kanji and you have a hard enough time reading basic words, much less names. Open up Google on your phone, write the kanji and add the japanese word for review behind it, and off you go. Great potential, anyway.
Having to handwrite the Kanji seems like an extra step though - it'd be easier to simply take a photo.
It's not easier if you're standing in a forest of 桜 and there's no paper and pencil around, as in the demonstration video. :-)
And even if you do have it written, it may be easier for the user, but it's harder for the computer. The order and direction of strokes is standardized, and getting this information as the user writes it is tremendously valuable.
I've played with handwriting recognition algorithms for kanji before, and if you assume the stroke order and direction are correct, you can make a surprisingly good algorithm with very little code. Detecting a character from an image is much harder.
The iOS handwriting recognition, for one, takes this into account. iOS officially only has hanzi (Chinese) handwriting recognition, but it usually works OK for Japanese, too, as long as it's a character that both languages have. But when you run into one of the characters where Chinese and Japanese have standardized on a different stroke order, like 王, it'll never recognize it when written using the Japanese stroke order, no matter how nicely you write it.
Re: Google Handwrite
#53When is Google's/Android's competitor to OneNote going to be available?
Android/iOS/Metro -- whichever one has a properly executed answer to OneNote is going to succeed like gangbusters. (Putting it that way, it speaks to serious dysfunction at Microsoft if it's not them, and indeed, there's a good chance that it may not be them.)
You're right that note-taking will be one of the killer apps for the next generation of tablets. OneNote for Metro ("OneNote MX") is already available in beta, so I'm guessing Microsoft is chasing that:
http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-US/app/onenote-mx/f02238...
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/office-2013-beta2/office...
Re: Google Handwrite
#54Note: This doesn't seem to work on an Opera mobile browser. Seems to work ok in the default android browser.
Google doesn't release mobile products for any browser except WebKit. They specifically whitelist.
Re: Google Handwrite
#55As anyone who mastered PalmOS's grafitti can attest, sometimes writing on a PDA / smartphone is a lot more usable than typing, especially on a soft keyboard. Input remains the weak point to many or most of these devices.
The beta version of Swype is really a major improvement. I'say I can write faster on my phone than on my pc, under certain conditions. The much slower part is copyediting, but it is mostly because sites like hn break the flow with some fancy textarea tweaks.
Re: Google Handwrite
#56Re: Google Handwrite
#57Sometimes opening a keyboard and typing is just too efficient. Sometimes you need a technology that will slow your life down and make it more prone to errors. Google handwrite: why type when you can awkwardly scribble?
Why speculate when we can race?
Re: Google Handwrite
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for the recommendation. I haven't checked this solution out yet, but it looks fantastic! I have never seen an app with this kind of kanji recognition.
It is indeed one of a kind. I haven't formally studied 書道 (calligraphy), but the ad hoc 行書 (cursive style of writing) I've developed out of laziness is recognized perfectly by it. If you're interested in good Android apps for Japanese, I would also urge you to check out Aedict[0] and DroidWing[1]. The latter, when combined with EPWING-format dictionaries obtained from a 3rd party source, is (IMO) just as good as any…
I must thank you as well. Though I love my standalone denshi jisho (Wordtank G55) that's lasted me a good 5 years or so, having an app for this works well if I don't want to bust the thing out... especially since these days I'm not sitting down writing Japanese essays.
Re: Google Handwrite
#59Can this be activated on desktop?
Re: Google Handwrite
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is indeed one of a kind. I haven't formally studied 書道 (calligraphy), but the ad hoc 行書 (cursive style of writing) I've developed out of laziness is recognized perfectly by it. If you're interested in good Android apps for Japanese, I would also urge you to check out Aedict[0] and DroidWing[1]. The latter, when combined with EPWING-format dictionaries obtained from a 3rd party source, is (IMO) just as good as any…
I must thank you as well. Though I love my standalone denshi jisho (Wordtank G55) that's lasted me a good 5 years or so, having an app for this works well if I don't want to bust the thing out... especially since these days I'm not sitting down writing Japanese essays.
Maybe it's because I was still in high school when the modern smartphone revolution came about, but for some reason, I just abhor the idea of a standalone 電子辞書 and see it as a 20th-century anachronism.
When I began studying 古文 and 漢文, despite being told that I would "need" to purchase a 電子辞書, I persevered and was able to (most likely thanks to my technical knowledge, which most other Japanese students admittedly do not possess) replicate all the functionality of a 電子辞書 on my existing smartphone for nearly free. In fact, I often found it superior in many ways, such as handwriting recognition with 7notes being far superior to the write-on-a-tiny-1-square-inch-pad-with-a-stylus approach that most 電子辞書 continue to take. And let's not forget the huge advantage provided by cellular internet access, particularly when it comes to looking up proper names when reading texts such as 三国志演義 (Romance of the Three Kingdoms).