Zi Give Nintendo the Right to Write

Just the other day, we were caught short when we needed a pen to write something down. Being children of the future, all we had was a Nintendo DS in our back pocket. We distinctly remember being outraged that we couldn’t use it to write something down and take with us. Instead we had to remember it in our brain, like a primitive savage.

Momentary inconveniences like these could soon be a thing of the past for lucky DS owners, as news comes that Nintendo has signed a deal with one of the leaders in the field of handwriting recognition technology. The Zi corporation is behind Decuma, a handwriting recognition program commonly used in Palm Pilots and similar devices. Decuma recognises even cursive handwriting with a minimum of fuss, and is available in three versions; one comprises European languages, a second version caters for Cantonese and Mandarin, and a third looks after the various Japanese character systems.

What Nintendo is going to use this technology for is anyone’s guess. The company has already released a Korean-Japanese translation program, so perhaps it could be looking to expand this executive portfolio with a notepad-style program. There again, there’s no reason that it couldn’t be implemented in games – a crossword game perhaps, or even an educational program for teaching kids to write. Got any brighter ideas? Share them in the forum below.