
Fleksy - Awesome new predictive text input method - nreece
http://fleksy.com
======
apinstein
I had this on my PalmPilot in 1998 but from a different company. It was
written by a friend who worked at a company with all kinds of patents for it,
but they never released the Palm version publicly. Only a few dozen people had
it in the world. It was amazing and it changed the utility of the PalmPilot
significantly.

You had to put a sticker with the qwerty layout over the silkscreen area and
then you just tapped away madly with the stylus. It was so good.

This is very, very close. Most of the mistakes it makes are due to the fact
that it seemingly doesn't look at your address book for completion options, so
when you try to type in people's names you know it picks a different word and
doesn't even have proper names as an option. Fails on stuff like my name
(Pinstein) or well-known things like "MacBook".

But it's still awesome! I've been waiting 10 years to have this on my handheld
again!

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jareds
I’ve been using Fleksy for about five days now. As a totally blind iPhone user
this app has some promise and some major flaws. The first issue is the fact
that the app takes at least 30 seconds to load on my iPhone 4 if you haven’t
used it in a while. I’ll deal with the crappy typing experience using the
iPhone onscreen keyboard instead of waiting 30 seconds if I’m just sending a
quick text. The second issue is the inefficiency of entering custom words. If
a word isn’t in Fleksy’s dictionary it’s much faster to type the word using
the normal keyboard instead of with Fleksy. This makes writing technical
emails or messages with lots of nonstandard words quite difficult. Since you
can add words to a custom dictionary in Fleksy though I would expect this to
get better with time.

~~~
fleksy
Actually, touch typing on Fleksy is faster than on the standard keyboard. We
reduced the lag time required to input letters from .5 seconds to .35. Plus,
you only need to input those terms once.

~~~
andrewmunsell
The thing he mentioned was startup time, though, not the actual input lag.

~~~
fleksy
Was responding to the second issue: "The second issue is the inefficiency of
entering custom words". On that front Fleksy is the same or faster than the
standard iOS keyboard.

~~~
chasingtheflow
I think he's suggesting that for "custom words" flesky autocorrects to the
wrong words, whereas the standard keyboard doesn't - thus leading to longer
input times under flesky ... at least until it learns those words.

~~~
ricardobeat
The standard keyboard also autocorrects non-standard words.

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jenius
Can anyone explain how this works? Seems like total black magic to me... the
dude is typing random gibberish and it still figures out the word? Then he's
just tapping randomly on the screen, gibberish comes out, then turns into the
word he wanted?

Don't mean this to sound unintelligent, the video was just crazy. What kind of
key proximity algorithms are behind this?

~~~
jeremyarussell
Patent pending kind? I doubt they are sharing it quite yet but the one beauty
of patents is we'll get the entire answer once the patent isn't pending
anymore. If I had to imagine though, the algorithm is just accounting for the
most likely word to follow the previous wording, that could have been formed
by hitting keys that were next to the ones you really hit wrong. I'd like to
see how it handles my wanton throwing of swear words in messages to friends.
And, the use of l33t speak and text talk.

Example, at 0:45 he swipes to the right and kryuwt turns into letter.

k -> l (k is next to l)

r -> e (r is next to e)

y -> t (y is next to t)

u -> t (u is next to y, which is next to t)

w -> e (w is next to e)

t -> r (t is next to r)

The options are letter, proper, merger and keeper (plus something else
further) Given the previous three words "you miss ever" the algorithm uses
some prior dictionaries and knows that when talking and saying "you miss
every" we get probabilities of of likelihood for each probably word. Letter
ends up being 35% as opposed to the 7 percent chance you see any of those
other words. ( that last bit of percentage math is an estimation given for the
sake of example, in a true text prediction dictionary the percentages are
usually small, given the incredibly large amount of words that can and do
follow "you miss every" (chance, shot, etc are probably more likely, but not
near those letters we kept missing earlier.)

It would seem they've made improvements on that algorithms. I wonder how novel
it really is though.

~~~
samstokes
This is pretty much how the stock Android keyboard works. It's been able to
spot missed keys since at least Ice Cream Sandwich - e.g. I just typed
"kettrt" and it's suggesting "letter" as a correction. Since Jelly Bean it's
also had some bigram support too (guesses the next word based on the previous
without you typing anything).

Aside from the "typing without a keyboard" part, it's not obvious from the
video how Fleksy differs from this, but the focus on blind users probably
makes a difference.

~~~
3JPLW
But does Android use context clues? iOS can't quite handle the two-letter
distance, but it accurately corrects "kryywt" (kry _u_ wt is too far away)
without any context.

------
mtrimpe
I've realized that for my mobile phone the typing speed will just never be
great regardless of the input method. Tools like this (and SwiftKey) improve
that a bit but not to a life-changing degree.

For the desktop this might be quite amazing however since, unless you're a
perfect touch typist, you will always make a small number of mistakes.

These small mistakes can be caught fairly easily (especially given the much
larger training set you'll gather on a desktop) and since you're looking at
the screen anyhow it's fairly easy to detect damn-you-autocorrect mistakes
before they slip through.

TL;DR; Don't use this to make inherently slow data entry a bit faster; use it
to make fast data entry even faster.

~~~
agscala
> for my mobile phone the typing speed will just never be great regardless of
> the input method.

Actually, way back when PalmOS and PocketPC were all the rage, there was a
company that released something called the Fitaly keyboard. I don't know what
you qualify as "great" typing speed, but with this keyboard they advertise
50wpm with a stylus, I was able to achieve 60wpm after some practice.

The point is, it is definitely possible to achieve fast input speeds on mobile
devices.

Admittedly it did take some practice and probably isn't great for the average
consumer.

<http://www.fitaly.com/product/fitalyppc.htm>

~~~
mtrimpe
I agree that a stylus changes everything; I should have been more specific.

I never got up to 60wpm with Fitaly but I do remember not really feeling
hampered by my typing speed.

In general you don't get a stylus with your phone anymore these days though...

~~~
agscala
Agreed.

Also it seems like it's finally coming full circle around back to styli again.
It seems like they're now being advertised as a new feature, which I think is
kind of funny. Granted, they aren't using resistive screens anymore, so it is
sort of new.

I'm waiting for a good stylus-enabled device before I purchase anything new.
The fact that you can't draw on most of these tablets is silly.

~~~
devindotcom
Yeah, I wrote about this a while back, the stylus will always be useful for
pretty fundamental reasons, though there will be phases in which it's not easy
to implement (we're coming out of one right now):
<http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/11/in-defense-of-the-stylus/>

------
jerf
Hmmm, this is probably the best argument for QWERTY I've seen. It's probably
based on relative key taps identifying the keys, so having a keyboard layout
that scatters everything makes it easier than a keyboard layout where aoeui
are all right next to each other, which are very frequently interchangable
between two legal words. Quite a few of the Dvorak consonant clusters are also
often interchangable in the same way (crl being the one I have the most, err,
"fun" with).

------
egypturnash
This… this looks and acts almost EXACTLY like the stock Android keyboard. The
swipes to accept a correction and to delete a word are new, and the graphic
design of the keyboard is more minimalist - but the core functionality of
"spellchecks based on words you could spell with keys near the ones you
actually hit" and "shows autocorrect candidates in a horizontal row above the
keys" is absolutely identical.

It's a shame iOS is so monolithic, if you could wedge in a new keyboard like
you can on Android, I would totally be willing to shell out some bucks for
this because I really loathe the iOS autocorrect experience compared to the
Android.

~~~
greendestiny
I don't think the similarity to the stock Android keyboard is coincidental.
The authors of this previously made Blindtype which was purchased by Google.

~~~
Evbn
Hope they hired a good lawyer to review the IP transfer agreements they signed
in the previous sale.

------
eckyptang
Windows phone pretty much does exactly this already. It's horrid.

I genuinely think that a better solution is to buy a phone with T9 if you have
input problems or like to enter stuff when not looking at it. You simply NEED
a tactile interface to do that effectively.

I carry a Nokia 3330 and Lumia 710 around. The 3330 is still a thousand times
easier to enter text messages into. I can use it with my eyes shut and make
absolutely no mistakes. The 710 however, is painful to enter text into.

~~~
encoderer
T9? Seriously?

I think you're an outlier, my friend.

~~~
eckyptang
I'm definitely not. I think your perception is warped by your social circles
which is probably smart-phone oriented.

The overwhelming majority of the handsets getting shifted out are feature
phones and below and they are mainly shipping with T9. Have a Google round for
the stats - they are not hard to find.

These stats also only cover traceable sales. There are a lot of second hand
sales.

T9 with some sort of tactile keyboard and some practice results in
considerably less errors and corrections being made compared to a touch screen
with a standard QWERTY keyboard.

~~~
encoderer
Yes, the world is a big and poor place. But in the United States where (like
other developed nations of course) people have the financial means to choose,
the majority of phones sold are smartphones. And T9 is generally looked at
like rotary dial.

~~~
eckyptang
Rubbish. Going back to September 2011 as I can't find any newer stats:

[http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/40-percent...](http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/40-percent-
of-u-s-mobile-users-own-smartphones-40-percent-are-android/)

~~~
msprague
[http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/16/technology/smartphones/index...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/16/technology/smartphones/index.htm)

------
Cyranix
Maybe I missed it, but I don't think I saw any demonstration of correcting
words that were typed with one fewer or one more letter than the intended
word. The absence of tactile feedback when typing makes this a fairly common
error -- anyone know if their algorithm is capable of handling it?

~~~
chime
My iPad app needs very few keystrokes to spell most words - only the first
letter has to be correct. You can see how few keystrokes need to be pressed to
type full sentences in this demo: <http://ktype.net/demo> (app is now free:
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ktype-free/id550288060>)

I wrote my own algorithm that parses through a dictionary of one-million words
and phrases in real-time (even one iPad 1) and suggests the most probable word
based on the letters you've typed and in context of the last 2-3 words you
typed. This means, typing 'P' after 'HARRY' will suggest 'POTTER' instead of
'PUT', 'PICK' or other common words that start with 'P'. I haven't made my
algorithm public yet but when I have some time, I intend to, especially if
there is a demand for it.

------
AndrewDucker
But you still have to type! I'll take Swype every time.

~~~
ZoFreX
While I do love my Swype (especially as, similarly to the claims made by this
keyboard, I am getting close to being able to "touch type" on it), I really,
really like how this keyboard looks. Just letters, no fake key edges or
anything like that, I think it's a huge improvement in the usage of the space
available.

There are several keyboards available for Android that just plain suck on this
front, with more space taken up by their early 00s pseudo-3d button styling
than by the letters. I love what Fleksy is doing here and I hope more people
follow in their footsteps.

~~~
HelloMcFly
I can't get Swype to stop autocorrecting normal words to gibberish, no matter
how many times I remove the gibberish word from the dictionary. For example,
every time I type "do" it becomes "siop" and nothing I can do impacts this.

~~~
ZoFreX
The latest version has a much improved dictionary management, and I've found
this issue has basically disappeared now, whereas it was very common before.
Whether this is solely due to the new dictionary management, or if there have
been other less visible changes under the hood, I don't know.

------
fleksy
Fleksy team guy here.

Thanks for the feedback guys, feel free to send anything else you might have
for us at feedback@fleksy.com We want to make Fleksy as good as it can
possibly be.

@fleksy on twitter.

~~~
zv
Software ("app") pretty much depends on dictionary. What about words that
aren't in the dictionary?

~~~
fleksy
There is a solid way to add and remove custom words to the dictionary. You can
also import a friend's(or a community's) dictionary.

------
cpbotha
Err, SwiftKey anyone? It's been around since 2008 and even has an xkcd comic
featuring it: <http://xkcd.com/1068/>

~~~
AWalrus
I love SwiftKey but don't think anything equivalent was previously available
for iPhone. My wife missed Swype terribly when she switched to iOS.

------
SoftwareMaven
I downloaded this and thought it was a little better, but not revolutionary.
Then I decided to try copying a paragraph of text without looking at my
keyboard. That's when I said "Wow!"

The combination of very smart prediction, speaking the words so I knew the
couple of times I missed, and one-stroke delete made typing on glass, dare I
say it, magical.

------
joshstrange
Ok, maybe I am extremely daft but how do you turn off the voice reading out
each word you type? I turned my device on vibrate/silent mode - no dice, then
I tried turning the system volume down to nothing - no dice. What am I missing
here?

~~~
jareds
There is no way to turn off the voice. This app is primarily designed for
visually impaired people who need that feedback.

~~~
fleksy
The option to turn voice feedback off will be coming in the next update.

------
lhorie
The main problem I have with input auto-completion is that the majority of
times I'm using my phone to type, I'm using non-dictionary-but-meaningful-
words (e.g. street names, foreign language terms) and the autocompletion
usually just gets in the way. I've yet to see a system that addresses these
kinds of usability issues.

~~~
fleksy
Getting the exact text as you typed it is just an upward flick away with
Fleksy.

------
cdcarter
Initial dictionary not trained with profanity. I hate how much time I have to
spend stopping things from being autocorrected to "duck." Fleksy didn't
improve on the situation.

------
nardi
This kind of technology has been around forever, but my guess is that the
quality increase here is due to one or both of these two factors:

1) Computing a two-dimensional vector for each word typed, and calculating MSE
against the ideal vectors for dictionary words, instead of just comparing the
distance of the keys you hit to the locations of keys for dictionary words.

2) Using LSM (latent semantic mapping) to discover context and increase
accuracy of #1.

------
sean-duffy
Certainly looks faster than typing on a standard touch keypad, but this makes
me really not look forward to my next phone. For the last couple of years I've
had a Blackberry and I've become used to being able to send out paragraph-long
text very quickly and efficiently. But of course a Blackberry Curve leaves a
lot to be desired in terms of the functionality of a modern smartphone. So I
want a better phone, but I'm just regretful of the fact that it's going to end
up being some kind of iOS or Andriod fully-touch, because I know my efficiency
will go straight down.

------
krollew
Well, I'm afraid I wouldn't like it. It seems it continues the only thing that
is annoying me in iOS input method - not writing what I actualy type. Sorry,
too often I use words it doesn't know (maybe in english it's better, but in
polish/russian/ukrainian it's quite a big problem). It would mean disaster
when using this app, isn't it? Does it support other languages at all? How
about cyryllic script? Does it allow to switch between languages easly? Does
it replace standard input method everywhere in iOS?

------
dylanz
Interesting approach, and it makes a lot of sense. It would be interesting to
see the algorithm behind it.

That said... every time I try out a new virtual keyboard, even for a few days,
the more I yearn for a physical keyboard on a phone I actually want. The
current options in the market for phone's with physical keyboards isn't great.

My passwords all contain plenty of special characters, and it requires many
more keystrokes to enter in my password on a virtual keyboard vs a physical
one. At least give me a shift key.

------
lepunk
I was skeptical but just tried it out and it's amazing. I even tried to type a
sentence blindly just by remembering the approx. position of the keys and it
worked perfectly

------
thangalin
How would adaptive keyboard layouts fair? I wrote a simple prototype that
tries to minimize (mouse) movement for highly functional people who cannot
speak and are fully paralyzed:

<http://davidjarvis.ca/keyboard/>

The centre key is the next most likely letter that will be pressed, based on
digraph lexical analysis.

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hackinthebochs
Pretty cool. I've been thinking of something along these lines for a while
now. The fact is, the relative position of each touch very likely determines
the word you're trying to type, regardless of what keys were actually hit.
It's surprising it took someone this long to release prediction at this level.
Looking forward to trying it out.

------
bitsoda
I tried this out just now. While the tech is very impressive and I could see
why this is a great keyboard for the blind, I've honed my iOS tapping to a
point where the stock keyboard is a bit faster. What slows me down is the
swiping for space. Hitting the spacebar is much quicker in my experience.
Still, very cool app.

------
dools
To me this just seems like lipstick on a pig. I can type really fast on my
Motorola Pro+ (it's like an e63 running android!) and not relying on
autocorrect means I can do things like type unix commands and control vim.

For the blind - what is the advantage of a phone with a giant battery sucking
screen on it in the first place?

------
aviraldg
SwiftKey already does this, and more. You can miss all the letters in a word,
and type multiple words without pressing the spacebar and it can still
accurately detect what you intended to type. Nothing revolutionary here.

------
downandout
I assume we can now look forward to DamnYouFlesky.com to complement
DamnYouAutoCorrect.com. I hope this works a little better than the iOS auto
correct that I have had to shut off, but my expectations are not high.

------
sequoia
Assuming this achieves some mainstream success, Apple offers "the bullet or
the bribe" (get bought out or we just rebuild your product in house and
destroy your business) in 3... 2...

too cynical?

~~~
georgemcbay
Getting bought out by Apple is basically their only option for mainstream
success on iOS because of the way iOS's keyboards are locked down. A keyboard
like this loses a lot of its usefulness if every app has to implement it via
SDK separately, because it is far better to have a consistent keyboard system
across all apps.

So I'm cynical too but from a different angle -- Apple has already fixed the
game when it comes to alternate keyboards (unlike Android where you can
install 3rd party keyboards that work system-wide).

------
hbz
I remember this product back when it was called BlindType. If you combined no
look input with swype, I think would be a pretty robust product.

~~~
chapel
BlindType was purchased by Google and as far as I can tell implemented into
the stock keyboard as you can touch type without looking and it will
successfully correct the words.

------
brador
What's the business model on this?

~~~
jareds
In order to get the actual text out of the app into an email, sms, or onto the
clipboard you need to buy a $4.99 in app purchase.

------
novaleaf
i don't get it. how is this different from Swype? or is Swype not available on
iOS?

~~~
mhartl
It's different in that Swype uses one continuous motion instead of discrete
taps. (There are undoubtedly other differences as well.) And no, Swype isn't
available on iOS. (N.B. I use Swype on Android and love it.)

------
chanux
This is more magic than Googling for s,sxpm and still getting what I want.

------
arrowgunz
Alright guys, get ready to bought out by Apple.

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drivebyacct2
Awesome. Again. Another keyboard implemented for an OS where you can't even
use the damn thing.

