Hi Cara,
OK, here is the trick: Make sure you hold the phone behind your back, face in a northwesterly direction and then lift up one leg. Now tap the screen simultaneously with both pinky fingers 1 and a quarter inches apart and at the same time spin around in a circle on the one leg you are standing on. It doesn't even matter if you stand on your left or right leg, "it just works" *smile*. OK, joking aside, following Barbara's instructions regarding the comma that is pretty easy now, do a period, a quick swipe down with 2 fingers to select the comma which is next in the list and then a 2-finger swipe right for a space. Now, one would think a colon is easy and when I practiced in the email body field and tried various symbols, I was able to do a colon a few times successfully just by very quickly tapping the screen once, one tap towards the top and a second tap towards the bottom. I experimented more with this now and it seems that it is slightly more successful when the two taps are farther apart, but then again other times I tapped fairly far apart and got a period every time. A Quotation mark seems to be somewhat more consistent, just draw a vertical line and then once again very quickly draw a second one a bit further to one side, I don't think it matters if you draw one and then move right for the next or vice versa. I thought also one should be able to pick the colon from a list just like the comma. The comma is consistently there if I do a period and then swipe down once with 2 fingers. However, there are only 5 symbols in this list if I do a single tap for a period: Period Comma Semicolon Apostrophe Quotation Mark I thought Apple did what Fleksy did and grouped similar symbols into groups so basically you draw one symbol and depending on what you draw you get a group of 5 or 6 other symbols, for example, draw a Question Mark and get an exclamation mark, a hyphen, underscore etc. Draw a Dollar sign and get other currency signs and so on. At first it does appear it is like this, but if I repeat something like writing a word and then drawing a question mark which I can do pretty consistently, I can swipe down and each time it seems I do this or erase and type another word followed by a question mark I swipe down to find different symbols. Only one where there is consistency is with the period, comma, semicolon, apostrophe and quotation marks. Another interesting observation is that if you go to numbers and write a number, for example a 1, if you then do a 2-finger swipe down you get seemingly random but repeating numbers and it appears there are always 8 numbers. For example, I wrote a 1, then I swipe down with 2 fingers repeatedly and I get this: 19587630 If I keep on swiping it repeats over and over. Now type a 2 and you get another 8 digit number, but if you do this on different occasions it appears you get a different number, e.g. type a 1 and you may not get 19587630 next time but another 8 digits. I wonder if they do offer selections with a 2-finger swipe down, then why not make it consistent, e.g. you type a 1 and then you swipe down and get 2, 3, 4,5 etc. I think this handwriting feature has great potential and I will inform Rob from the Today in iOS Podcast about this feature since it does not appear to be available for sighted users. I think this could and should become mainstream and Apple needs to develop this into the best and most efficient handwriting recognition application out there. I bet there might be jailbreak apps which allow people to use handwriting. I am normally fairly good at recognizing patterns and methods behind the application of stuff, but this does leave me a bit baffled and wondering if this is something that was implemented but is just not fully thought through or if I am totally missing something. If Apple can do this, I wonder how long it will be before braille input on the touch screen is something they adopt as well, hopefully they approach developers of some of the apps people use now and like instead of doing it themselves, taking it away from these people and possibly do it not as good. Same goes for something like Fleksy. When you look at all of these apps and technologies like SIRI/voice recognition or handwriting and then try to see the big picture, there is just so much potential for super cool stuff and I think there is room for more "revolutionary" break-through and not only "evolutionary" upgrades. I wonder what we will discuss in 3 years, 5 years or 10 years. Regards, Sieghard -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. Post a new message to VIPhone by emailing viphone@googlegroups.com. Search and view the VIPhone archives by visiting http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/. Reach the VIPhone owner and moderators by emailing viphone+ow...@googlegroups.com. Unsubscribe and leave VIPhone by emailing viphone+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. More VIPhone group options can be found by visiting http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. 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