SwiftKey users spend an ample amount of time customizing their experience, adding new words and phrases to the dictionary, and the like. However, switching devices can pose a problem: the process starts all over. Being a company that is always looking for a way to improve life for its user base, SwiftKey decided to do something about that. Enter SwiftKey Cloud Beta, a new backup and sync tool that will keep your user-defined dictionary in sync across all your devices.
The idea behind Cloud Beta is simple: keep users' data backed up in the cloud, and make it available across all of their devices. It doesn't stop there, however; CB also pulls trending information and current events from across the web to quickly provide suggestions for words you may be typing. For example, if you type "Zim" in Cloud Beta, the word "Zimmerman" will be the first suggestion, because of the recent verdict found in last week's trial. Likewise, if you type "royal," the following suggestion will be "baby," because the entire world's talking about William and Kate's bundle of joy. Basically, if it's a hot topic in the news and people are talking about it, SwiftKey Cloud Beta will know and make those words easily available to you – similar to Swype's Living Language.
While the existing SK builds can pull info from your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and SMS to custom-tailor suggestions, Cloud Beta can also gather information from your Yahoo! Mail. This is, of course, completely optional, you must give it permission, and it is a one-time-only data sync. You can, however, have it re-"learn" by tapping the option (in settings > SwiftKey Cloud > Personalization) again.
It's more than just words, though. Cloud Beta predicts common phrases that you type, as well. For example, l discuss guitars, pickups, amps, and the like with my good friend Cody all the time. As a result, when I type "Di" into Cloud Beta, "DiMarzio" is the first suggested word, followed by "Crunch" and "Lab," because I'm constantly talking about the DiMarzio Crunch Lab pickup that I'm considering for one of my guitars. And of course, it does all this across every device I have Cloud Beta installed on. It's actually quite brilliant.
Of course, there's the question of security. Any time we talking about an application storing user data in the cloud, the tinfoil hats [understandably] come out. After all, your private data is just that: private. Fortunately, SwiftKey has confirmed to us two very important things: A) passwords will never be stored within Cloud Beta, and 2) your personal information is stored securely onAmazon S3 in the UK. Your information is kept private, secure, and is available only to you. That's important.
SwiftKey Cloud Beta is available as a free download during its testing phase from SK's Beta site, and will come as a free upgrade to existing users once it exits beta.
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