New: WYDI Demo/Usage Video!

Enjoy the video demo!

(Note: fitting the video into this blog makes some smaller things hard to see, so if you'd rather see a larger-resolution version, you can go here)

P.S. I totally lied about this being uploaded to Youtube... sorry! Had some issues with converting file formats and all that blah blah blah. Regardless, please leave comments here, thanks!

New Features Update for WYDI!

Wow, what an intense several days it's been! In the last two weeks since we first launched the alpha trial of WYDI, we've added so many features and improved the layouts so much that looking back, we hardly recognize the original code.

Alright, enough babbling, let's get to the features:

1) Added picture of gesture to list of contacts
2) Added animation to show exact order of strokes in which a gesture was drawn
3) Fixed bugs in deletion and editing of contacts and gestures
4) Fixed just about every layout, so that navigating WYDI is now a lot more intuitive and more visually appealing!
5) This one opens up a lot of interesting possibilities: we've added the ability to associate gestures with... applications! That's right, you can now define a gesture for your favorite installed applications, and then launch them right from the WYDI main screen.

(Note: we won't be releasing our current build, but only because we feel that we are SUPER close to something that'd be ready for prime-time that we'd rather not steal any of our own thunder.)

Just a week or two at the outside, and the full version of WYDI will launch on the Android Market, as well as on a third-party site where we'll be offering a discount to users who buy the full version there. Oh, and speaking of pricing, we promise it will be no more $1.99 at most, and could very well be even lower at launch time!

Almost there!

Cheers,
--- The WYDI development team

P.S. For anyone who's been tracking the updates in the Android platform, Google is promising the ability to write custom home screen widgets in Android v1.5 ("Cupcake"). While we're still looking into doing a custom widget for something like aHome or dxTop (not that we're endorsing these or their competitors), we really want to focus on the offical 1.5 release to write our very own, fully-integrated home-screen widget! And according to Google, this should be happening really, REALLY soon. But if it so happens that we release our full version before Google releases the 1.5 SDK, then we'll definitely offer free upgrades to any users who purchased WYDI who want to upgrade to the "widget-ized" version, when it's ready.

Launch: WYDI Lite!

Just a quick little update to announce the launch of our first trial/alpha build, called WYDI Lite on the Android Market!

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WYDI Lite is a true gesture dialer for the Android, allowing users to define gestures for their contacts, then quickly call, text, or email someone by simply drawing the gesture for that person! Forget traditional speed-dial, since there's no need to open up a keyboard. And plus, there's no need to clutter your home screen with all those hard-to-read shortcuts for your favorite contacts.

To use WYDI, simply launch the application, click the Menu button and select "View / Add Gestures," then click a contact from the list of your currently saved contacts to add a gesture for that person. Once you're done drawing, click "Add," and you'll be taken back to the list of contacts, where you can keep on adding gestures if you'd like. To call/text/email someone, just go back to the first screen, draw a gesture, and click either the "Call," "Text (SMS)," or "Email" button!

*** NOTE: The Lite version limits the user to defining a maximum of 3 gestures. WYDI Lite is also provided as-is, with no warranty whatsoever (but if it starts acting up, definitely let us know!).

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We're working diligently on improving the user interface, to make the app a lot more user-friendly, intuitive, and visually appealing, but we've just had so much fun playing with the basic gesture-matching that we just had to let the rest of the world have a sneak peak at what we're doing! After all, how cool is it to call your friend just by drawing a smiley face?

More posts coming as updates and bug-fixes are released in the next couple of weeks and months. And of course, we welcome comments either here on the blog or in the Market listing. We also have a general email: WYDIWYG.CS.INC@gmail.com.

Cheers,
--- The WYDIWYG development team

P.S. A little trivia in terms of naming... obviously we're making a play on the term "WYSIWYG" for text editors. We think that "What You Draw Is What You Get" is a good general summary of what this project will hopefully do in the future (hint: more than just calling/texting/emailing). WYDI is the shorter, cuter, consumer-version name for the phonebook application which we plan to release a full production-ready version of within the next couple of months, so stay tuned!