The new program manages to make a prediction on the words that are entered as soon as the first letter is known. Gutowitz claims that it reduces the necessary number of key strokes in comparison with other systems. The application is called LetterWise and is based on a Java script that occupies 1800 bytes and on a linguistic database that takes 560 bytes. Gutowitz has founded a small company called Eatoni Ergonomics and is currently negotiating with several mobile phone manufacturers to have his software included on the SIM cards of GSM phones. The names of the manufactueres in these negotiations are not disclosed so far.
Improved displays are only half the battle.
Among U.S. mobile commerce users in Boston Consulting's study, text entry was the biggest complaint. Eatoni Ergonomics may have helped dissolve the wireless world's biggest, ugliest wart. Eatoni engineers say they've done this whole process better. Its algorithms are mind readers, which will guess at the rest of the word while it's being typed. The program is based on how often letter combinations appear, the same theory at the heart of cracking spy codes.