About a year ago I was in a beta test of MessagEase, a new input method for handheld devices, much like the FITALY keyboard many of you may have tried already. Goto www.exideas.com to read all the information. I got to work learning the layout, and used it on my Sony Clie T615 for a while. Through device upgrades and application conflicts, I had dropped MessagEase and forgotten about it. The other day I decided to check out how far they had come. Now MessagEase works on OS5 devices, and commercial stamps are availible. What really made me excited was that they had developed a Silk Plugin for the Sony Clie OS5 handhelds with virtual graffiti areas that let you switch between using the standard virtual graffiti area, and the MessagEase stamp easily. I loaded the program and Silk Plugin onto my NX70 and had it setup in seconds. This is a wonderful app! In combination with the NX70V’s built in thumb board, and GraffitiAnywhere (An EXCELLENT app that lets you write graffiti anywhere on the screen of any PalmOS handheld. Great for Treo, TG50, Tungsten, and Hires+ users) I have tons of input options availible to me at all times. I have MessagEase loaded into the virtual graffiti area, good old-fashioned graffiti on the whole screen, a thumb board below the screen, and a full size keyboard in my bookbag.
If you have a PalmOS PDA and are looking for a faster and more accurate means of text input, you must give MessagEase a look. The learning curve can seem a little steep at first, but once you get the hang of it it is wonderful. Durring the beta test there were reports of people getting up to 80 words per minute with MessagEase. I, personally, can do about 40. Still much faster than my graffiti is.