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RAM: Simpler Messaging

Two-6-6-5 spells "cool" in T9-speak, the predictive text-messaging software available on 75 percent of America's cell phones. But just as wireless users have gotten used to this shorthand, Tegic Communications, a Seattle-based subsidiary of America Online, has launched T9 Mobile Suite, designed to make sending messages even easier.

The latest version of T9 incorporates a handwriting recognition technology that allows users to write messages or URLs with a stylus. They can even use a keyboard to send an e-mail message. Speech recognition capabilities will be released in early 2006. Tegic's T9 Mobile Suite also allows user-added abbreviations, chat phrases, and e-mail addresses, and the ability to automatically insert the apostrophe in recognized contractions.

"The reality is that many consumers find mobile e-mail, Web browsing, and search to be painstaking and cumbersome. The time was right for an easy-to-use solution to the challenges imposed by data services," says Bill Schwebel, president of Tegic. It also doesn't hurt that "selling data services packages to consumers is a great money-maker for carriers right now."

The new multimodal user interface is available in five languages: English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian. Sounds pretty 2-6-6-5.

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