Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Paragon Software Group, a leading software developer of productivity, security and educational applications for mobile devices and desktop PCs, releases InterKey 3.0 - a multilingual text input application for Windows Mobile Pocket PC. Due to large and fingertip-friendly keys, text input by hand or stylus becomes effortless, and typing foreign languages on a standard keyboard is fast and accurate. The program is available in two editions - InterKey 3.0 Standard and InterKey 3.0 Professional with word autocompletion function."

There have been lots of SIP keyboards that have emerged in the last few years, especially ones focused on finger typing. So, what makes the Paragon Software version different? Primarily, it seems to be the foreign language support. InterKey 3.0 supports 60 national keyboard layouts which you can flip between as needed. I would be curious to know if we have any users who can make use of the Mongolian layout. The closest I can get is ordering Mongolian Beef when we go for Chinese cuisine. As you will note above, the word auto-completion feature only comes on the Professional version, which adds $10 to the price of the Standard version, which is $25. You can download demos from the affiliate links.

One of the things that bugs me about software input panels is that when you're using a device in landscape mode, the panel shoves everything else off the screen to the point where you can't see what you're doing. Even in portrait mode, the popup panel can be a little annoying, and I can just imagine the angst with square screens. Tom Jaros at Empower Mobility thinks he has a potential answer to this problem - make a vertical keyboard (see pic above). The mockup displayed has the SIP coming out of the left or right, or alternatively split in two. As the owner of a fairly large device (ok, it's a brick), this idea is pretty attractive and I'd love to see something like this developed. But before that can happen, Tom wants some feedback from the community about what you'd like to see, and whether you'd use an app like this - bear in mind that the picture displayed is a mockup, and will definitely be refined. Thumb/finger friendly keys is one area of improvement, and layouts that would help increase data entry is another. If anybody has any thoughts on this you can drop in on the Empower Mobility website and take the survey, or just post your comments right here. So, what do you guys think?

"TouchPal is an innovative software keyboard powered by T+ input technology, which significantly improves the inputting experience on touchscreen handheld devices. Typing on TouchPal is pretty easy: you just need to tap and slide by your thumb. In most cases, you only need to tap tap tap and use the auto-word predition to input the right word. For precise input, you can slide left/right for a specfic letter, slide up for uppercase, slide down for a punctuation, or slide up and then down further for the symbol/number on top of each key."


There seems to have been a real push lately in finding a new way to input text using fingers and thumbs on the touchscreen. TouchPal, by CooTek, is actually in it's 3rd rendition. If you're already a TouchPal user, you can find a list of changes here. For those not familiar with TouchPal, check out the video above, which demonstrates the very unique slide between keyboard layouts. Though it may be hard to see in the video, TouchPal uses what it describes as T+. which "combines two letters and a symbol on each button of a QWERTY keyboard-based layout". Why not check it out and compare it to some of the other finger-based SIP's?

"VITO Technology releases new ZoomBoard version 2.0, an onscreen keyboard with zoomed preview for comfortable and accurate FINGER typing. New ZoomBoard allows for quick and accurate typing and can satisfy the demands of any choosy user with 3 different types of zooming: full zoom, lens zoom, float zoom. Lens zoom appears above the keyboard, Float zoom appears straight above the letter you press and the full one zooms in the whole keyboard with letters. Another new useful feature is SmartZoom. When enabling this option it is possible to zoom the pressed letters either immediately or with a delay. Another important upgrade to ZoomBoard is the significant increase of layouts. Alongside with the layouts that were available in the previous version (English, Russian, German and some others) there have appeared 32 layouts for other languages. In addition, the landscape mode has become more user-friendly it does not close all screen."



ZoomBoard 2.0 brings a few nice customizations to this iphone-esque keyboard. If you're pretty confident about your typing, the SmartZoom feature with the zoom delay might be kind of handy. Edit: Current 1.0 users qualify for a free upgrade so try it and let us know what you think. Thanks to VITO for the updated info.