ShapeWriter Inc. has launched its suite of text-entry products for Windows Mobile and Android devices.

ShapeWriter has also upgraded its WritingPad 1.0 software for iPhone. Now called ShapeWriter 2.0, this enhanced version is available at the Apple iTunes App Store, though all versions are available at http://www.shapewriter.com/download.

"ShapeWriter technology is invented and perfected by nearly a decade of research and development work, first by scientists inside of IBM at the famed IBM Almaden Research Center -- which invented such things as the disk drive and relational database -- and now by engineers at ShapeWriter Inc.," said Wally Greiner, president of ShapeWriter Inc.

"With the recent rise in popularity of the touch screen devices led by Apple's iPhone, ShapeWriter is finding powerful applications to dramatically improve the user experience of these devices," he said.

Since its launch of ShapeWriter -- first called WritingPad -- in July, there has been much demand to expand the company's technology to other mobile platforms, both by handset manufacturers and by mobile users.

With ShapeWriter, instead of "hunting and pecking" letters, single gestures on a touch keyboard produce an entire word.

For example, a stroke that roughly connects the w, o, r and d keys is recognized by ShapeWriter's algorithms as the word "word."

ShapeWriter claims that experienced users can write much faster using its app than on a conventional keyboard.

"Our strategy is simply responding to the market demand," Mr. Greiner said.

"A great number of users have given us valuable feedback so we can perfect and harden the technology in a direction that matters to the real user," he said.

All ShapeWriter products run in real time on mobile devices, featuring editing, automatic formatting and capitalization, error tolerance, misspelling correction and gesture commands.

ShapeWriter 1.0 on Android, a winner of Google's Android Developer Challenge, has been specifically customized for the T-Mobile G1. It supports note-taking, email and SMS and features a practice game.

ShapeWriter 1.0 on Microsoft's Windows Mobile is a system-wide input method supporting all standard software applications on Windows Mobile and Pocket PC 2003.

That version works on phones from manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

ShapeWriter 1.0 on Microsoft's Windows XP/Vista is suited for Tablet PCs, HP Touch Smart computers, UMPCs and any PC connected with a Wacom tablet.

ShapeWriter 2.0 is an upgrade from WritingPad 1.0, which was named by Time.com as one of iPhone's top 11 must-have applications, according to the vendor.

"ShapeWriter 2.0 Pro is a major upgrade -- it not only fixed obscure bugs in earlier versions, but also brought many highly demanded or powerful new features," Mr. Greiner said.

Included in this are a landscape keyboard option and an orientation lock so users would not have to struggle with it when shape writing in bed or on a bus and automatic misspelling correction.

Other features are font and background customization, notes list reordering, text selection by tapping and sliding, and stroke commands - strokes starting from the CMD key - such as copy, paste and undo.

"Version 2.0 incorporates many new features requested by early users," he said.

ShapeWriter is a text input technology developed for nearly a decade by scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center.

Under the code name "Shark," its early version was made publicly available from IBM AlphaWorks in 2004.

The company claims that it received enthusiastic reviews from technology critics and the media outlets such as The New York Times, BBC News, San Jose Mercury News, New Scientist and The Economist.

ShapeWriter is currently available for Windows Mobile, Android and Windows PC on a pay-per-download basis with a 30-day free trial period.

There is also a paid Pro version for the iPhone.

"Pending Apple's review we are also releasing an ad-supported free version upgrade," Mr. Greiner said. "The ads are supplied by AdMob, which show up nicely and unobtrusively in our app when the user finishes shape writing a note or an email."

ShapeWriter is relying on word of mouth to get the word out about its various mobile apps.

"Like many ... ideas and technologies, ShapeWriter's spread is mostly by our user community," Mr. Greiner said. "There are many really great comments in the iPhone App Store about ShapeWriter such as 'in love,' 'additive,' '10 times faster,' 'best app,' 'OMG,' 'revolutionary' and 'nominate for the Nobel prize!'

"Many show the technology off to their friends and it earns a lot of 'Ahs!' and 'Ohs!'" he said. "Some users tell us they bought the iPhone because an Apple store manager showed them ShapeWriter.

"It is this kind of grassroots viral marketing that we rely on."