This is an awesome bit of kit and I’m not sure how they do it, voodoo or something probably, but it’s pretty spot on.

It’s made by the one of the inventers of the T9 predictive text solution that is on most phones these days.
The other inventor of this is the developer of the onscreen Windows keyboard. Winning combo!

Sooooo, what is Swype?

It’s a different way of using the on screen keyboard you see on all touch screen phones these days. Swype works by moving your finger across the keyboard to spell out the word you want. Basically it’s like using the normal keyboard, but without taking your finger off the screen.

It’s meant to be easier and faster than the normal way and they reckon can allow you to type out over 40 words per minute. The application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.

I have had a go on this on Android on the HTC Desire. I have to say I was a little unsure of what to expect to start with, but once I started it was really easy and intuitive. I was also amazed at the accuracy of the suggestions of words that came out.

What about double letters?

I thought getting double letters on there might be tricky, but simply circling the letter you wish to repeat spits out a repeat. So in ’spoon’ you would start at ’s’, mover over to ‘p’, move over to ‘o’ and then circle round it and then move to ‘n’. Easy!

In the image below, you can see how they have spelt out the word ‘quick’. You can see how great the suggestiveness is from that image…how does it know you want to spell ‘quick’?

Conclusion

It’s a great use of the onscreen keyboard and it does really make life easy when writing out long emails or texts on mobile devices. It can be quite weird to get used to keeping your finger on the screen at first as it goes against what your mind is probably programmed to do. But once you get over that barrier, it’s very smart, intuitive and quick. Nice work

More info on Swype can be found on the Swype website. And here are some tips and trick on Swype.

After going out earlier than expected in the 2010 World Cup, Brazil will be no doubt putting their all into winning this one in their home country and I’m sure you won’t get much back if you put a quid on them doing exactly that at the bookies.

The 2014 World Cup will be the 20th one so far and Brazil will be only the 5th country to have hosted it twice along with Germany, Italy, France and Mexico. Brazil have also been in every World Cup finals tournament and won it 5 times!

More info about the World Cup 2014.

Below are a few examples for you to peruse…

Have a little play and enjoy here: hakim.se/experiments

See the video below for the book in action. It can be bought from the publishers website @ http://us.macmillan.com/abc3d.

Good luck to anyone willing to give the Khmer alphabet a go… :S

The beer, named Tactical Nuclear Penguin, weighs in at a whopping 32% alcohol content. BrewDog have stated the drink should be enjoyed in small measures and responsibly and presumably at £35 a bottle, slowly

The beer beats the last winner of the World’s Strongest Beer, Schorschbraer, which weighed in at 31%. After releasing a beer called Tokyo that was 18%, BrewDog were called irresponsible and subsequently released a low alcohol beer, Nanny State.

BrewDog have stated on their blog that they will be producing 500 330ml bottles of Tactical Nuclear Penguin. 250 of which will be available at £35 a bottle. The other 250 will be at £250 a bottle complete with a share in the company.

I am a big fan of BrewDog beers and a bottle or nine two of Punk IPA often frequents my shopping basket after a hard week at work. BrewDog beers always have great working on the side of the bottles, I like the humour that comes with a bottle, it really adds to the experience. Here is what the Nuclear Penguin bottle says:

“This is an extremely strong beer, it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance. In exactly the same manner that you would enjoy a fine whisky, a Frank Zappa album or a visit from a friendly yet anxious ghost.“

The first batch of limited edition bottles has already sold out, but you can get on the list for the second lot here: http://www.brewdog.com/product.php?id=46. Also, that doesn’t stop you trying any of the other beers they brew…Trashy Blonde is also great.

Mmmmm beeeeeeer

The Konami Code (or Konami Command) is essentially a cheat code that cropped up on a lot of Konami’s games. It was first used in the mid 80’s on a game called Gradius which was released on the NES.

The Konami Code is used by pausing the game and then hitting the following buttons:

You can find a full list of games that used the Konami Code here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Konami_code_games

Konami Code Sites

The list of sites that use the Konami Code can be found be cracking the code on this site: http://konamicodesites.com/. But if you’re feeling lazy and can’t be bothered, here is the list so far:

Emo-what?

Emoji are picture characters that are very popular in the Japanese mobile market. One analyst even specifically cited the lack Emoji support as one of the factors contributing to slow sales in the Japan market…crazy, but true!

Originally meaning pictograph, the word literally means e “picture” + moji “letter”. The characters are used much like emoticons elsewhere, but a wider range is provided, and the icons are standardised and built into the handsets.

I read a blog recently on how to get the set of Emoji icons for the iPhone for free, so I thought I would share that…

How do I get my hands on these?

Simple, just follow the instructions below. Beware though that these only work from iPhone to iPhone, so people with other handsets will not benefit from this

1. Check your iPhone has firmware 2.2 or 2.2.1
2. Download the ‘Spell Number‘ app from the App Store.
3. Launch Speel Number and enter the following code 91929394.59.
4. Close the app without doing anything else.
5. Open Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards >Japanese > Turn the Emoji “ON”
6. Now when you start writing a text message there should be a little globe there. Clicking on this globe opens up the Emoji icons.

There’s lots of icons on there (461 apparently), so enjoy!