Since its release early last year, the iPhone (Smart Phone) has been selling like crazy. Initially some people even stood in a line for 3 days before stores in New York and elsewhere in the US, where iPhones were schedules to be sold for the first time. Still its demand is so high that one out of five people are seen using iphone in New York city’s subway, streets, cafés and in other public transportation. Its rich interface feature was designed with the consumer in mind, combining the features of Apple’s acclaimed iPod, with the convenience of a phone, allowing for music and video playback, surfing the web, and direct access to the iTunes Store.

It seems that the only people left out are the business user. But with Apple’s plans to release a software development kit (SDK) to allow for users to create their own third party applications, the business user has something to smile about. Furthermore, with the 2.0 firmware to be released soon will add push email support, Virtual Private Network support, Cisco IPsec, WPA2 for 802.11x, as well as Microsoft Exchange and ActiveSync support.

All these will be valuable and attractive to any business user, though the most interesting feature may be handwriting support. To keep all these in mind Apple seems to have started working on developing handwriting recognition software to support iPhone. It also catches article writers attention when a job listing was observed. A job listing on Apple’s website seeks a handwriting recognition engineer, with a well rounded knowledge in C/C++ coding, neutral net algorithms, and cocoa programming. The interesting thing is that Apple notes that the development and design “may extend beyond Mac OS X to other applications and the iPhone.” Could Apple be looking to integrate handwriting into the iPhone? Or perhaps into another tablet type computer? Who knows for sure… All we know is they are looking for help in this area!

The handwriting technology could provide the boost the iPhone needs to reach its business users. The iPhones onscreen keyboard has been widely criticised for its awkward design and any alternate input could be beneficial for its users. This technology may also be part of the much rumored tablet MacBook, as well as Apple’s ModBook, which already uses InkWell handwriting technology.

But, while apple is trying to gather team to build this technology, one of the Chinese developer already developed the software. Seems like the Chinese are running ahead in the game.

Few weeks ago, a Chinese developer has released handwriting recognition software-both Latin and Chinese alphabets-for the iPhone. Similar to Graffiti, the classic writing software for Palms, you can setup HWPen from Installer.app to give you a writing area that can take over the standard keyboard at the touch of button. It’s a 1.0 beta version, but it works.

Bangladesh has lots of talented programmers, who should concentrate in new technology to achieve advantage in technology market. If other programmers can then why Bangladeshi programmers can’t do it? Only things are — read, research, and act fast. There is still the opportunity for a Bangladeshi IT company or an individual to build handwriting recognition software for English, to benefit from Apple.

Author: Al Mamun
(The writer is a freelance journalist and working for an Investment Bank in USA as a Sr. Vice President- IT0
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Courtesy: The Financial Express