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April 12, 2006
Vishy's Useless Factoids of the Day: T9
I've recently come to be a moderately heavy user of text messaging. I am not sending out so many text messages that I should pay for my cellular provider's unlimited text messaging plan, but all the same, I no longer consider sending one anything but utterly ordinary.
For the longest time, I used the ABC mode on my cellular phone's keypad without knowing that a considerably more keypress-efficient alternative was but a menu click away--T9, intelligent textual input using just the nine keys of your cellular phone's keypad. T9 scans each successive key you press to guess the word you intend to type. When I discovered T9, I was loathe to let go of the absolute feeling of control that ABC mode gave me. With ABC mode, I knew exactly why every character had its place on the screen. T9, on the other hand, sometimes spouted wild guesses that were disturbingly far away from my intention, but algorithmically correct. Over time, I got used to letting go of my iron grip over each character and letting T9 lead me with its inexorable guesswork. I also found that my usage of text messages shot up considerably after I switched to T9, something I don't believe is entirely coincidental.
I watched spellbound as T9 got better with its guesses. My relationship with T9 was maturing; it seemed to know with increasing accuracy exactly what was on my mind. As I wrote to various friends, it would even guess their names correctly! I speculated that my contact list was automagically added to the T9 database of potential guesses. Today T9 guessed 'Google' for me and I stopped to think. Google was definitely not an entry on my contact list; was my cellular phone provider getting with the program and updating my phone's T9 database with names of products and services used by yuppies? A Google (who else?) search revealed to me that I could update my T9 database myself; indeed that was how it was learning my style so well. Everytime T9 gets a word wrong, change to ABC mode, correct it and change back to T9 mode. T9 will incorporate that correction into its database from that point onwards. It seems like most cellular phones that offer T9 work this way.
So, happy text messaging! Here's to less sore fingers!
Posted by Vishy at April 12, 2006 09:13 PM