What if an OCR app is installed on the N900 with some modification so that the accelerometer provides the input to it by mapping the movement of the phone in the air to a 2 dim. mapped handwriting?

In other words as the user draws the letters in the air with the phone they would be transcribed into text that could be sms-d or whatever. This would be a cool app.

wouldn't typing be easier?

But it it's a nice way to make art.

Or disguise a curse out session as a rythmic dance...

Lol!

Sounds like a nice 10 minute gimmick to impress iPhone fanbois and N900 naysayers though (and I don't mean gimmick in a bad way- after all I consider mutli-touch to be just that, when other methods + gestures work just as well).

It would be hard to use accelerometers for the letters, to much noise. But for the (abstract) painting, sounds doable.

This is the type of useless but fun apps that make a device. hell i've bought terrible gadgets for 1 interesting feature that i only used once. i still have some things i've never used after the first week but it's still cool to show off to friends. i don't have the n900 yet (pockets are very dry till end of January) so i don't know how the phone will be able to detect vertical and horizontal movement. i know it will detect tilting.

if it was able to measure directional g's then probably.

the only way i can think of is using the camera's to take hundreds of pictures and compare them to detect movement. A 14year old kid used the same technique for a gloved mouse, the camera on the palm of the glove detected by comparing the pics the movement and how fast etc.

edit: the gloved mouse worked in the air not from a flat surface.

I loved "Light Sabre" on my N95, so I feel you.

I totally agree on multitouch. Its a super technology, but iPhans act like its the be-all-end-all. I'd found myself hating on multitouch just to prove you could do big things without it. I'd like it mostly for gaming, and not pinch zooming. The circle gesture does well for me.