ShapeWriter has released a demo iPhone application of their technology (called WritingPad in the iTunes store). The idea behind shape writing is that you trace a path over the letters in a word and the software matches the pattern to its dictionary of words. The demo application lets you write notes and email them.
I installed it on my iPod Touch and it works pretty well (aside from a few crashes, but then all the new applications seem to be crashing). I typed a few sentences and found it quite a bit faster than the virtual keyboard, at least when I'm typing common words that the ShapeWriter dictionary knows.
Shape writing is based on research done by Shumin Zhai and others at IBM. Zhai's web page has a recent introductory article about the technology: An Introduction to Shape Writing (pdf).
Also on the text-entry front, the new iPhone software includes several international keyboards, including a Chinese handwriting interface that's fun to play with even if you don't know Chinese.
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