I've been switching to use google Japanese IME for several months, and I really love it. Though it does not have the function which I need most, which is to switch among Latin letters, numbers and kana (mainly because my laptop doesn't have a standard Japanese keyboard), I still love it and had never wanted to use MS IME again. Almost all Google products favored me—well, I can't refuse the fact that I prefer OPERA than Chrome, yet I do use the two browsers when Opera comes to an incompatible issue. ^^;
Google Japanese IME has a similar interface to MS IME, but it gives you a tinier, faster, and neater interface. Based on the huge web information, g-IME has integrated much, much more Japanese vocabularies that you may not find from a traditional dictionary—yet it doesn't require an Internet-based environment, the dictionary has been built in the IME itself, which is awesome.
It also has its own memory, which means, it can learn your typing habit and makes your typing easier and faster. I love its typing suggestion too; I save much of time on that point. Moreover, like what google stated, it's very stable, I only had a few crashes caused by unknown problems, well, forgive that, g-IME is still in Beta!!
This IME is really awesome. I was reading the developing comic about it in early of this day, which was the really reason inspired me to write about it.
By chance, I clicked the link to their developing comic. You can find it here: http://www.google.co.jp/ime/comic/
It's in Japanese, I won't translate it, cause I know people who would like to read about it must somehow know some Japanese, and probably someone has translated it… I guess… ^^
It's in Japanese, I won't translate it, cause I know people who would like to read about it must somehow know some Japanese, and probably someone has translated it… I guess… ^^
I know the Japanese is good at making the sense of humor, yet I never knew their humor is everywhere. Like a short video clip, this comic introduced us into the whole developing story of google Japanese IME; it told you from the very beginning, and described several very technical points in an easy-to-get way. I don't think I could even laugh if that was an official developing diary or blog—they are way too formal. Here, in the form of comic, everything was described well, decent, delightful, and of course, funny.
Just one page from the entire comic, which is describing things about converting romaji to kana and selecting a user-preferred key-bind:
See, the robot is knocking the kana out from a big romaji, instead of the converting, and in the bottom, the robot are taking lots of key-binds, ohh, there are so many choices for the users if you use the google IME! Likewise, the comic is all saying things like this, in the simple way.
This product was made from their huge sense of humor; I can feel it very much.