… Scrolling through contacts or typing the name on the touchscreen qwerty is surely a slow process and one of the frustrations I have with the iPhone (btw which is otherwise a wonderful gadget). Google’s gesture search for the Android is something that attracts me. After playing with the possible optimized search by typing and search by voice, which gets a little inappropriate to use in the quiet environments, Google labs have come up with the Gesture search. Gesture search uses handwriting recognition technology and opens up a list of contacts, installed applications, bookmarks or music tracks that match with the drawn letter or word using the touchscreen.
Suppose that you have written the letter ‘A’ so it will give you a list of all the items starting with ‘A’ or if your letter is slightly distorted and ends up looking like an ‘H’ it will give you the results of both together. Not only this, its integrated with a smart search so that the frequently or recently searched item appears at the top of the list.
Now here comes the bad part, the application is currently working only on the 2.0 version and not the earlier ones leaving a vast majority of users behind.(Looks like they want only a few people to use it!!!) I can already see a lot of Android users fuming with ire; most of them using 1.5 or 1.6. Also, it seems the app is only available for the US users (unconfirmed). Besides that, downloading the app has two options either by using the Android camera to scan the QR code on the screen computer or buying it from the ‘Market’ on your Android powered device. See here for downloading instructions.
Via Google Blogspot
Last week, an iPhone version of the above Google tool was launched by Sparkling Apps. It’s called ‘Gesture Find and Dial’, and it has some additional features such as speaking out the gestures it recognizes. Try it out, it’s completely free. It’s available in the app store at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gesture-find-and-dial/id428238701.