The plan was that my Newton Message Pad 110 would relieve me of those tiny scraps of paper cluttering my wallet and the ring of Post-It notes that had turned my monitor into a mutant flower. I diligently set out to transfer the minutiae of my life into the little black tablet, but soon discovered that while the Newton is great for storing and retrieving information, it sucks as an input device.
So my monitor continued to bloom, my desk and wallet remained cluttered with paper, and the Newton spent most of its time as an expensive bookend. Then a friend told me about Palm Computing's Graffiti, an application that provides an alternative to Newton or Zoomer's handwriting "recognition" software. He swore Graffiti gave him nearly 100 percent-accurate text recognition. Suppressing my skepticism, I bought a copy of Graffiti; within 20 minutes, my Newton was reborn.
Graffiti uses a modified, block-letter character set so each letter can be drawn in a single, unique stroke. Learning Graffiti is a lot easier than learning how to type. I was able to get decent results right out of the box.
Graffiti is friendly to those of us with sloppy handwriting: your characters don't have to be terribly legible or consistent. Its forgiving nature allows for a fair amount of speed - Palm Computing claims that a proficient Graffiti user can enter more than 30 words per minute. I'm not even halfway there, but I don't type that fast anyway.
Graffiti has the equivalent of shift, caps-lock, number-lock, and alternate keys that allow you to enter numbers, punctuation, extended characters, and diacritics. Try getting the Newton's recognition software to give you an umlaut, or even a semicolon.
Graffiti is the closest thing to a "killer app" for the Newton yet. Too bad it's a remedial solution, rather than a true enhancement.
Graffiti: US$79. Palm Computing Inc.: (800) 881 7256, +1 (408) 848 5604.
STREET CRED
Nanotech Writ LargeA Sure Cure for Phone Stress
Remedial Recognition
