Do You Text?
Do you ever wonder how some people blaze through texts? Do you spend precious time typing out a response to your kids’ text messages to you?
They are probably using a software called iTap, T9, or XT9 depending on your phone. Any of these allow you to quickly enter words. You don’t have to press so many keys, words are predicted based on a dictionary, and previous words entered are remembered.
Here’s how it works. If you don’t use one of these, and you wanted to enter the word “HELLO”, you would have to press 4 twice, 3 twice, 5 three times, 5 three times, and 6 three times. That’s 13 key presses for just one word! With iTap, T9, or XT9, you press 43550 (once each for each number) - just 5 key presses! The software then predicts the word you want to enter based upon the keys pressed. The software also “learns” over time by the words that you use most often. If there is more than one word that can be used with the keys you pressed, you simply scroll to select the word you want.
I was really confused by this setting at first, because I didn’t understand what it was doing (I had never heard of this software before). It took my 12 year old (who was completely dumbfounded why I wasn’t using iTap) to explain what it was. Once he did, it was so easy! I’m never going back to all that key pressing again!
If you’d like to get a bit more information on the software, here are the wikipedia links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITap or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_%28predictive_text%29.
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Is thaaaaat sooooooo? I’ve only known that since I was 8 years old…