Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
|
All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
|
|
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Nokia researches natural language input for phones
Natural language input is not ideal for phones, unless it's combined with voice input (and that's still a rare thing).
Supposedly this is aimed for information retrieval, but I would prefer to enter the shortest possible distinct text, like "movie fun dick jane" instead of "Can you please provide information about the movie Fun with Dick and Jane?" (slightly over-exaggerated).
Natural language input has been tried many times before (the phenomenon as such is at least 20 years old), but it never caught on. It hasn't even caught on when the user has a terminal with full alpha-numeric keyboard and a high-resolution display. Rather GUIs replaced the need for natural language input on PCs.
What would be more useful:
* Local or central memory of entered keywords (you likely search for the same keywords again).
* Better predictive text dictionaries that can be upgraded via the network with e.g. professional terminology etc.
* Predictive input that understood what's a verb, noun etc to make a better prediction. This includes words that you add yourself.
* Auto-completion of predicted words. Already supported by some phones, but not all.
* Touch screens on featurephones as well, for quick navigation using your fingers or a stylus.
* Idle screen combined with application menu, so that messaging etc is literally one key away.
Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact
Hinted by:
textually.org: Nokia Phones Go to Natural Language Class
Supposedly this is aimed for information retrieval, but I would prefer to enter the shortest possible distinct text, like "movie fun dick jane" instead of "Can you please provide information about the movie Fun with Dick and Jane?" (slightly over-exaggerated).
Natural language input has been tried many times before (the phenomenon as such is at least 20 years old), but it never caught on. It hasn't even caught on when the user has a terminal with full alpha-numeric keyboard and a high-resolution display. Rather GUIs replaced the need for natural language input on PCs.
What would be more useful:
* Local or central memory of entered keywords (you likely search for the same keywords again).
* Better predictive text dictionaries that can be upgraded via the network with e.g. professional terminology etc.
* Predictive input that understood what's a verb, noun etc to make a better prediction. This includes words that you add yourself.
* Auto-completion of predicted words. Already supported by some phones, but not all.
* Touch screens on featurephones as well, for quick navigation using your fingers or a stylus.
* Idle screen combined with application menu, so that messaging etc is literally one key away.
Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact
Hinted by:
textually.org: Nokia Phones Go to Natural Language Class
