Swiftkey Flow Beta Android App review

Free beta

Since phones moved to the touchscreen model, there have been apps such as Swiftkey that have aimed to make typing faster, and latterly have aimed to predict what we type. While many users claim that they are absolutely wedded to the physical keyboard models of their BlackBerrys, in fact when they transfer to touchscreens most do not look back.

With SwiftKey flow, two things come together: the first is to continuous typing to Swiftkey, meaning you simply glide (or ‘flow’) your finger from one letter to the next rather than tapping each key, and it also add the option of strings of words too. So users can drag their finger from one letter to the next, then to the space bar and start the next word, without ever taking your finger off the screen. While the single word option is increasingly built in to Samsung and Google Nexus devices such as the Nexus 4,the option to do sentences is incremental progress. When it works it can be a huge boon to the hurried user. When it doesn’t it’s infuriating but the balance is largely positive. I managed to ‘type’ entire messages without lifting my finger from the screen. While Google’s in-house version offers live updates on its suggestion in a bubble above your finger, Swiftkey does it in a bar above the keyboard.

The second is the continued SwiftKey feature of predicting the next word. This is less perfect –while it can analyse your Google and Facebook accounts to see your style, it doesn’t always get it quite right, and sometimes it’s just illiterate. The system presents three options each time: after I started typing “Are you” its next suggestions were “the” and OK”, both of which are plausible, but its third option was “are”. “Are you are” seems an unlikely way to begin a sentence.

Swiftkey Flow is, overall, a really good thing in the sense that Swype-style typing is good and largely accurate, and the word prediction is both often right and sometimes good enough that you’ll accept it. Frustratingly, however, the former doesn’t work everywhere it should, such as in the gmail search box on the Nexus 4, and the ‘flow’ part of incorporating the space bar can’t also predict words.

Too young to withstand the shock

Mizan and Masum are cousins: too young to understand what took away their mothers late Saturday night.
Mizan, 11 months old, and Masum, 18 months old, are now too exhausted to cry for their mothers. They were leaning against their fathers' shoulders like statues.
Both depended on mother's milk.
Almost a week had gone by since their mothers went to work at Tazreen Fashions factory in Ashulia and did not return.
Mizan's mother Mitu's body was lined up among other bodies at Nishchintapur Primary School ground Sunday morning while Masum's mother Mahfuza is missing.
Mahfuza is presumed to be among the 53 dead whose bodies were charred beyond recognition. The unidentified were buried in Jurain graveyard.
Mitu and Mahfuza had been working at Tazreen for the last two years. They married Saddam Hossain and Abdul Jabbar, brothers.
The widowers were wandering from one end to the other of Nishchintapur village yesterday looking blankly and holding their sons close to their chests.
Ruins and wreckage of the burnt factory are what they now roam around in gloom and despair in search for help.
"We do not know how we will lead the rest of our lives with the motherless kids," said Saddam, "We have to work for survival without anyone to take care of our poor sons."
The brothers came from Bhurungamari of Kurigram looking for livelihoods in the capital more than half a decade ago and got jobs as garment workers in Nishchintapur of Ashulia on the outskirts of the capital.
Jabbar married Mahfuza around six years ago while Saddam took Mitu as wife five years ago. They had been living in the same neighbourhood ever since.
"My son is missing his mother and has stopped eating…he refuses to go to anyone else," said Saddam, adding, "I am now penniless… I had to spend all my money to take my wife's body to Rangpur for burial…I can't afford to feed him."
"I can neither leave my son with anyone nor can I go to work," said Saddam, who works at a nearby garment factory.
Jabbar said his son too has stopped eating as Mahfuza used to feed her son and play with him during breaks while at work.
"What do we do now?" he said.
At least 111 garments workers perished at the factory Saturday night in the worst industrial fire in the country.

RMG fire safety largely ignored 15 fire service teams begin countrywide inspection to find out ill-equipped factories

The government yesterday launched a nationwide drive to identify readymade garment factories with dismal safety system, five days into the nation's deadliest industrial blaze in Ashulia.
Fifteen teams from fire service inspected 73 garment factories in Ashulia and found that one-third of the factories did not have sufficient fire safety measures and security for workers.
The issue of workers' safety in factories has come up strongly following the devastating fire that killed at least 111 workers at Tazreen Fashions in Ashulia on November 24.
It was found that the factory neither had any emergency exits nor adequate fire safety measures. And fire-fighting equipment on its different floors had not been used during the fire accident.
Moreover, the eight-storey factory had the permission to have only three floors.
The teams comprised of 70 officials would inspect as many factories as possible between November 29 and December 2, said M Abdus Salam, director of Fire Service and Civil Defence (administration and finance), who led the drive with the help of police.
He said they would submit a report to the home ministry on Monday with recommendations for taking punitive measures against factories with dismal safety system.
Salam said they might recommend cancellation of fire service licence of noncompliant factories.
The fire service will then send mobile courts led by executive magistrates to noncompliant factories to penalise them for their failure to ensure workers' safety.
Salam said they did not find any factory without fire safety system, but many of the factories did not fully comply with the directives of fire service.
Those factories did not organise monthly fire drill or arrange training for workers and staff. Fire extinguishers were not even refilled in many factories, he said.
The 15 teams are asked to inspect at least five factories a day.
During the drive, they checked whether the factories had adequate fire-fighting equipment, emergency fire exits and evacuation arrangements, and if they trained workers to tackle fire incidents.
Salam said his team inspected five factories in Zirabo and found that two factories -- Shapr Dyeing and Printing Industries Ltd and Loresk Fashions Ltd -- did not have adequate fire-fighting equipment.
The validity of fire-fighting equipment at the two factories had expired and the workers had not been given training to use them, he said.
Sources said the owners and officials of the two apparel plants had fled their factories sensing the presence of the inspection team.
"We did not find them in their factories," said Salam.
Mokter Hossain, deputy director of the Industrial Police in Ashulia, said they accompanied the fire service teams to the factories.
In the meantime, a committee probing Saturday's fire incident found that Abdur Razzak, production manager at Tazreen Fashions, had been the main culprit for so many deaths in the deadly blaze.
"Though the fire alarm went off, the production manager did not allow the workers to get out of the factory," said Salam, also member of the probe committee formed by the home ministry.
In their statements, the survivors of the fire alleged that Razzak had misled the workers saying it was a regular drill, not a fire incident.
"As a result, the workers could not get out on time and got trapped in the fire," said Salam.
He also said the team was yet to talk to the factory owner and officials, as they were not available.
Also, the labour and employment ministry had moved to form a taskforce to supervise safety measures in garment factories, labour secretary Mikail Shipar told a parliamentary body.
“The taskforce will be composed of representatives from the government, garment owners and workers and headed by the minister or the state minister,” Mikail told reporters after a meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on the labour and employment ministry.
He said the taskforce would visit at least 20 factories every month to see if the plants were complying with safety regulations.
The labour secretary also said the labour directorate on November 27 filed cases with labour courts against Delowar Hossain, managing director of Tazreen Fashions.
“The owner simply cannot shirk his responsibility,” Mikail said.
Israfil Alam, chief of the parliamentary body, told reporters that the committee had recommended stern actions against those responsible for the deadly fire.
The lawmaker said the committee did not want to make any comments pointing fingers to any people. “It is under investigation and we believe the truth will come out through investigation.”
Meeting sources said the committee members were annoyed by the absence of Labour Minister Rajiuddin Ahmed Raju and State Minister Monnujan Sufian.
AHM Anwar Pasha, executive magistrate of Dhaka district, said if a factory does not have any fire-fighting equipment then its owner could be sent to jail for six months to three years along with fines under the Prevention and Extinguishment of Fire Act 2003.
If a factory with fire-fighting gears fails to use the equipment in case of fire its owner will face jail up to six months along with fine, Anwar Pasha told The Daily Star.
Queried about his department's failure to inspect every factory seeking renewal of fire licence, fire service Director Abdus Salam said, "It's not possible for our officials to ensure proper inspection at every factory during renewal of fire licence, as the number of inspectors is very poor compared to that of factories."
Five days into the deadly fire at Tazreen Fashions, the garment makers yesterday decided to form a high-powered committee to ensure upgrade of fire safety apparatus at RMG production units.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said it would soon form a taskforce and set a time limit for the garment owners to upgrade fire safety measures at their factories.
“If the owners do not upgrade fire safety measures, the taskforce will shut down their plants,” BGMEA President Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin said.
Meanwhile, some 300 people among who were university students, journalists and artists joined a protest outside the BGMEA building in the city's Karwan Bazar yesterday to demand justice for the victims of the fire incident.

US birth rate falls to record low

The US birth rate hit a record low last year, led by the decline in child-bearing among foreign-born women, according to a Pew study.
The overall US birth rate decreased by 8% between 2007-10, and by 6% among US-born women, found the data.
The rate fell sharpest for those hardest hit by the recession: 14% among foreign-born women and 23% among Mexican immigrant women in particular.
The 2011 rate was the lowest since 1920, when such records began.
Previous research by Pew concluded that states with the largest economic downturn from 2007-08, were most likely to have experienced fertility declines.
Foreign and US-born Hispanic women have experienced the largest fall in household wealth since 2007.
But increased access to contraception for Latino women may also be playing a part in the falling birth rate, according to the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.
Foreign-born mothers continue to give birth to a disproportionate share of the nation's newborns.
Last year there were 3.95 million total US births, according to the preliminary data from Pew Research Center.
The overall US birth rate was 63.2 per 1,000 women of child-bearing age.
It peaked in 1957 during the Baby Boom years, reaching 122.7 per 1,000 women.

UN upgrades Palestinians' status

The UN General Assembly has voted to grant the Palestinians non-member observer state status - a move strongly opposed by Israel and the US.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the assembly the vote was the "last chance to save the two-state solution" with Israel.
Israel's envoy to the UN said the bid pushed peace process "backwards", while the US said the move was "unfortunate".
The assembly voted 138-9 in favour, with 41 nations abstaining.
Hundreds of Palestinians celebrated on the streets of Ramallah, in the West Bank, after the result was announced.
'Birth certificate'
"Sixty-five years ago on this day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 181, which partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two states and became the birth certificate for Israel," Mr Abbas said shortly before the vote in New York.
"The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine," he said.
The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, said "the only way to reach peace is through agreements" between the parties, not at the UN.
"No decision by the UN can break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel," he said.
Opponents of the bid say a Palestinian state should emerge only out of bilateral negotiations, as set out in the 1993 Oslo peace accords under which the Palestinian Authority was established.
Speaking after the vote, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, urged the Palestinians and Israel to resume direct peace talks and warned against unilateral actions.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the vote "unfortunate and counter-productive", saying it put more obstacles on the path to peace.
"By going to the UN, the Palestinians have violated the agreements with Israel and Israel will act accordingly," said the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Twitter.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also called for more talks, saying the resolution underscored the need to resume meaningful peace negotiations.
The UK abstained from the vote, as did Germany. The Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands and Panama were among the nations voting with the US and Israel.
In the West Bank, crowds celebrated the vote by waving flags and chanting "God is great!"
"For the first time, there will be a state called Palestine, with the recognition of the entire world," Amir Hamdan was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
"Today the world will hear our voice," he added.
Symbolic milestone
The Palestinians are seeking UN recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967.
While the move is seen as a symbolic milestone in Palestinian ambitions for statehood, the "Yes" vote will also have a practical diplomatic effect, says the BBC's Barbara Plett, at the UN.
It would allow the Palestinians to participate in debates at the UN and improve their chances of joining UN agencies and bodies like the International Criminal Court.
Last year, Mr Abbas asked the UN Security Council to admit the Palestinians as a member state, but that was opposed by the US.
Mr Abbas was much criticised by many Palestinians for remaining on the sidelines of the conflict earlier this month in Gaza and efforts to achieve a ceasefire with Israel.
His Fatah movement, based in the West Bank, is deeply split from the militant Hamas movement which governs Gaza.
Gaza's Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh said in a statement sent to the BBC that Hamas' "support for the UN bid is based on the 'rule of non-recognition of the occupier'... and the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland".

Meherpur transport owner leader shot dead

Unidentified criminals shot dead a joint secretary of Meherpur district bus owners' association at Gangni upazila of Meherpur Thursday night.
Sahiduzzaman Beltu, 40, was also an executive member of Gangni upazila Awami League unit, reports our Khustia correspondent.
In protest of the killing, the ruling party activists in Gangni put barricade on Kushtia-Meherpur highway on Friday.
Mizanur Rahman, officer-in-charge (OC) of Gangni Police Station said a group of seven to eight criminals went to Sahiduzzaman's two-storey building at Banumdi bazaar area around 9:15pm.
The criminals called Sahiduzzaman from the road through cell phone, said the OC quoting Sahiduzzaman’s servant Biplob.
The OC said Sahiduzzaman must have known the miscreants as he came out and took them in his house.
At one stage of talking, one of the criminals opened fire on Sahiduzzaman. He died on the spot, the OC added.
None of the Sahiduzzaman's family member was in the house during the incident.

BSF kills cattle trader in Lalmonirhat

Indian Border Security Force (BSF) shot dead a cattle trader at Gotamari border in Hatibandha upazila of Lalmonirhat Thursday evening.
The BSF members also took away the body, reports our Lalmonirhat correspondent.
The deceased was an Indian citizen, BSF informed the message to BGB
around 10:30 am on Friday morning, BGB official said.
Sources in the Gotamari Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) camp said the BSF personnel shot the man around 11:30pm when he and four other cattle traders went Bangladesh territory and was returning with a consignment of cattle through the border.
One of the cattle traders was shot dead by BSF, while rest other traders ran away from the spot.
Maj Ruhul Amin, the second in-command of BGB-31 confirmed the killing.

Space Tramp Free-floating planet

Not all planets are content to dutifully circle a star. A new rogue planet has been spied roaming free among a pack of young stars about 115 to 160 light-years from Earth.
It's not a planet in the conventional sense, because it doesn't orbit a star. Yet it's between four and seven times the mass of Jupiter, well within planetary size range. The object appears to be a young, cold planet in a cluster of about 30 stars moving together called AB Doradus, astronomers report in the December Astronomy & Astrophysics. The free-floating planet is the closest to Earth yet discovered, scientists say.
“It's quite a nice discovery probably the clearest example of a planetary mass object that's very young like this,” says astrophysicist Philip Lucas of the University of Hertfordshire in England, who was not involved with the study.
Other potential free-floating planets have been detected before, but their ages weren't as well known. Astronomers couldn't be sure the objects were planets and not brown dwarfs, failed stars too small to sustain fusion reactions in their cores.
The newfound object, dubbed CFBDSIR2149, lies in the southern constellation Dorado. Scientists estimate the planet is between 20 million and 200 million years old, based on the assumption that it was formed around the same time as the stars that it accompanies.

It's There Too Carbon at the core

A tiny fraction of carbon helps account for the oddly light density of Earth's iron core, a new computer simulation finds.
Though the core is only 0.1 percent to 0.8 percent carbon, the iron ball is the largest reservoir of carbon on the planet, the study authors said.
An impenetrable 1,790 miles (2,890 kilometers) below the planet's surface, the core is a compelling mystery. The density of pure iron is heavier than the core's observed density, which is calculated from seismic and laboratory studies.
Even though the bulk of the core is iron, scientists have surmised it must contain a small amount of lighter elements such as oxygen and sulfur. Using computer simulations, researchers from the University of California, Davis, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing tested whether Earth's most common element, carbon, also hides in the core.
"We knew the density of the core, and we knew that metal iron and nickel alone couldn't account for that density," said Qing-Zhu Yin, UC Davis geology professor and study co-author. "You need something lighter."
Previous estimates of the carbon content of the core have differed by a factor of 20, Yin wrote in the study.
In the computer model, carbon was one of the major missing light element candidates; others included silicon, oxygen, phosphorus, magnesium, hydrogen and nitrogen. An accurate knowledge of carbon's influence can help pinpoint the exact timing of the core's formation.

Did You Know? What is the Rio Hamza?

t is name of an underground river that flows 4 Kilometres below the Amazon.
THE Amazon basin covers more than 7 million square kilometres in South America and is one of the biggest and most impressive river systems in the world. But it turns out that - until now - we have only known half the story.
Brazilian scientists have found a new river in the basin - around four kilometres underneath the Amazon River. The Rio Hamza, named after the head of the team of researchers who found the groundwater flow, appears to be as long as the Amazon but up to hundreds of times wider.

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