Did you even watch the video, you missed the point completely.

Did we watch the same video, or am I missing how this is terribly similar to Graffiti?

I agree with the graffiti comparison. I think Graffiti is preferable, also, because its characters seem to be faster to draw than the 8pen (to this day, I still write my capital Es like I'm using my Palm Zire).

Haha, I thought I was the only one who accidentally writes letters Grafitti style.

I was the worst at writing k's and x's weird.

At the time it was the fastest way to enter data, until the Treos and the original touchscreen/physical keyboard combos came out.

The novelty of Graffiti is that it emulates what we write, how we write it in analog form. The motions and shapes made while using this app don't have that sort of relationship. Is gesture typing, or Swype, or Swiftkey rip offs of Graffiti because one traces their finger in a path abstracted from the alphabet?