Google adds handwriting to mobile search site

People still write?

I'm bemused as to why anyone would want to, though admittedly my truly dreadful handwriting makes me a little biased (I can only barely read it myself so a machine has no chance), but I can't imagine anyone actually choosing to write on a fondleslab screen when typing is an option. Input by handwriting on the Palm was only worthwhile because it was more usable than the stylus driven keyboard which obviously was no better than one finger, and its still bloody painful with a capacitive screen, stylus or no.

I really wish the crystal ball had been a bit clearer to educationalists in the 70s, and they'd added typing to the list of "no practical use" (words of my maths teacher on matrices) stuff they made us do. Persevering in telling me I'd be an abject failure if I didn't improve my handwriting was a) tedious and confidence sapping, b) completely wrong. Touch typing would have been a genuinely useful asset.

Handwriting for search is a solution without a pressing problem.

More useless crap from Google

These, about languages, might interest some...

http://discovermagazine.com/1994/jun/writingright384/

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/07/291_71163.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language_and_computers

From the 2nd URL:

"Hangeul exceptionalists also take pride in how economical Hangeul is. All of the letters are composed of a combination of two common shapes: lines and circles. Hangeul has only 24 distinct letters, 14 consonants and 10 vowels, making it easy to learn. Hangeul is also easily adapted to computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices. Some people argue that the ease of inputting Hangeul into a computer or mobile phone stimulated the early diffusion of IT in Korea."

From the 1st URL:

"The Egyptians probably learned the idea and some principles of writing from the Sumerians. The other principles and all the specific forms of the letters were then quickly designed by some Egyptian who was clever, but not quite as clever as Korea's King Sejong. "

Regarding the 3rd URL, I read somewhere (maybe on Hancom /Han office's site) that the Korean language is much more processor-efficient and enables intensive, text processing to run 20%-40% faster than the same research in other languages' words.