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Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

fleksy.com

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Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

#61
post #36

Can anyone explain how this works? Seems like total black magic to me... the dude is typing random gibberish and it still figures out the word? Then he's just tapping randomly on the screen, gibberish comes out, then turns into the word he wanted? Don't mean this to sound unintelligent, the video was just crazy. What kind of key proximity algorithms are behind this?

I think there's a bit of a show here. I'm guessing he went through this demo quite a few times before they filmed this. The prediction algorithm probably starts "learning" which words follow other words based on use (on top of the proximity algorithms). So if you go through this a few times its getting "smarter" and more predictive.

Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

#63
I downloaded this and thought it was a little better, but not revolutionary. Then I decided to try copying a paragraph of text without looking at my keyboard. That's when I said "Wow!"

The combination of very smart prediction, speaking the words so I knew the couple of times I missed, and one-stroke delete made typing on glass, dare I say it, magical.

Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

#64
post #20

But you still have to type! I'll take Swype every time.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.exideas.me... this is better

That looks fascinating, thank you. It also looks like it will take a few days to get the hang of, but it may well be worthwhile!

Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

#65
post #3

I've realized that for my mobile phone the typing speed will just never be great regardless of the input method. Tools like this (and SwiftKey) improve that a bit but not to a life-changing degree. For the desktop this might be quite amazing however since, unless you're a perfect touch typist, you will always make a small number of mistakes. These small mistakes can be caught fairly easily (especially given the much…

Swype boasts rates of 50+ WPM on a smartphone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swype

Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

#66
How would adaptive keyboard layouts fair? I wrote a simple prototype that tries to minimize (mouse) movement for highly functional people who cannot speak and are fully paralyzed:

http://davidjarvis.ca/keyboard/

The centre key is the next most likely letter that will be pressed, based on digraph lexical analysis.

Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

#67

Windows phone pretty much does exactly this already. It's horrid. I genuinely think that a better solution is to buy a phone with T9 if you have input problems or like to enter stuff when not looking at it. You simply NEED a tactile interface to do that effectively. I carry a Nokia 3330 and Lumia 710 around. The 3330 is still a thousand times easier to enter text messages into. I can use it with my eyes shut and make…

haha! This has got to be trolling. It obviously doesn't make sense to carry both a 3330 and a 710, so I am guessing this is fabricated to make some English textile artisan's point.

Burn them looms!

Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

#68
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patent pending kind? I doubt they are sharing it quite yet but the one beauty of patents is we'll get the entire answer once the patent isn't pending anymore. If I had to imagine though, the algorithm is just accounting for the most likely word to follow the previous wording, that could have been formed by hitting keys that were next to the ones you really hit wrong. I'd like to see how it handles my wanton throwing…

>that could have been formed by hitting keys that were next to the ones you really hit wrong. Google does this already and I would assume they aren't the only ones. I once accidentally typed "cinnabd oatterb" into Google, yet it knew I wanted "Command Pattern". Still works today.

The Levenshtein distance, the standard metric for determining how different words are from each other, can easily be modified to change the penalty for different letter replacements. For example, you can say that the penalty for substituting an 'a' for 's' is 1, and 'a' for 'p' is 10 (or whatever).

Re: Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the world is a big and poor place. But in the United States where (like other developed nations of course) people have the financial means to choose, the majority of phones sold are smartphones. And T9 is generally looked at like rotary dial.

Rubbish. Going back to September 2011 as I can't find any newer stats: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/40-percent...

By your own stats it was 40% over a year ago, and you don't think they've creeped past 50% yet?

Nonsense. For stats, look at that Pew poll linked in the CNN article alongside this comment. For anecdotal evidence, look at the free/sub-$50 phones offered by all major carriers with a new contract. They are almost all smartphones. It's cheaper up front to get a smartphone now than the alternative.

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