After discussing APIs last week, it’s time to go over the importance of beta testing. When it comes to the iPhone, this is called Ad Hoc development, and can be great for developers who want to get excitement out about their product or just make sure it works. Beta testing allows applications to be run under a variety of environments that the developer may never have been able to product otherwise.

If you remember a while back, I wrote about a third party app that allows for handwriting recognition on the iPhone called HWPen. Now, according to recent reports, build number 5A258f of the iPhone 2.0 beta software supports a handwriting recognition interface that currently allows only Chinese character input. A translated page of the website more »