Abstract: The present disclosure provides systems and methods for text entry through handwritten shorthand stroke patterns. One example computer-implemented method includes receiving, by a mobile computing device, data descriptive of an input stroke pattern entered by a user. The input stroke pattern includes one or more strokes that approximate a non-linguistic symbol. The method includes identifying, by the mobile computing devices, one of a plurality of shorthand stroke patterns as a matched shorthand pattern to which the input stroke pattern corresponds. The plurality of shorthand stroke patterns have been previously defined by the user. A plurality of output text strings are respectively associated with the plurality of shorthand stroke patterns. The method further includes, in response to identifying the matched shorthand pattern, entering, by the mobile computing device, the output text string associated with the matched shorthand pattern into a text entry field.

Abstract: Techniques and systems are presented for providing “contextual insights,” or information that is tailored to the context of the content a user is consuming or authoring. Given a request for information about a topic, which may be indicated by a user gesture in an application, one or more queries to search services may be formulated without requiring entry of a search query directly by a user. Moreover, techniques and systems may leverage the context of the content the user is consuming or authoring, as well as user, device, and application metadata, to construct the queries and to organize and filter the results into relevant contextual insights.