Hasta La Gadget!

 Tactus makes keyboards that appear out of seemingly flat glass touchscreen surfaces, thanks a fluid-based layer that reacts to electrical signals to create rises and bumps that serve as keys and buttons. It’s a magical technology, and one that you can see demoed on video in the clip below from CES this year. Soon, you’ll be able to get that tech on a range of devices thanks to a new… Read More

Toronto-based startup Whirlscape has secured $500,000 in seed funding in a round that included Y Combinator, FundersClub, BDC Venture Capital and more, the company announced today. The startup created Minuum, a software keyboard that reduces occupied screen real estate to a single line, and that works with a range of devices, including wearables with small screens – or no screens at all.

The company launched its Minuum beta last year, and then made the software available to all on Google Play as a paid app later on. The 10-employee team has not only shown the value of its software on traditional hardware like smartphones, but also on devices breaking new ground in emerging categories, such as the Samsung Galaxy Gear, as seen in the video below.

Minuum made its debut on Indiegogo, where it managed to raise $87,354 over the course of its crowdfunding campaign, or almost nine times its original $10,000 goal. There’s a clear continued interest in alternative input methods for mobile devices, as evidenced by the success of others including Fleksy and SwiftKey. Growing interest in wearable tech, and the prospect of devices from major players like Google and Apple on the horizon have only served to fuel additional interest in alternative input methods for text and numbers.

“We’re working with a number of wearable device partners to try and really demonstrate the potential that Minuum has on their devices,” explained co-founder and CEO Will Walmsley in an interview. “I can’t get much more specific, but definitely there are a couple of smartwatches that we’re working with, and a couple of devices beyond smartwatches, too.”

Besides building wearable integrations, Whirlscape is also going to focus on growing its Android user base and engagement stats, leading up to the YC demo day in March, after which point Walmsley says they’ll probably turn their attention to bringing on new talent to add to the existing ten-person team.

There will be a big reward for the first company to make it easy to do text input on a tiny, wrist-borne screen if the interest in smartwatches from big OEMs continues, so Whirlscape is smart to be trying to solve that problem early on.

San Francisco-based Fleksy has launched its in-app SDK integration for iOS via four new partners who implement the software in their own apps today. These include Launch Center Pro, Wordbox, GV Connect and BlindSquare, and were chosen from a number of potential partners to help Fleksy demonstrate the power and range of its virtual keyboard.

Operating on iOS as a replacement for a default system component like the keyboard is not an easy task; Apple will not allow third-party devs to replace some system features like the keyboard, browser, messaging or calling app in the same way that users can do so on Android. Fleksy is attempting to get around this limitation by providing an SDK that third-party devs can use to build Fleksy into their own apps one at a time, in much the same way that Google makes it possible for devs to build in an option to have their software open links in Chrome on iOS.

These four launch partner apps are all available right now in the App Store, and take advantage of Fleksy’s unique ability to interpret a user’s intended input regardless of where they strike on the screen to different ends. Fleksy co-founder and COO Ioannis Verdelis explained to me the selection process for this first batch of apps in an interview.

“We’ve had a lot of interest [from third-party devs] really since our first release of the app on iOS,” he said. “We’ve picked four partners who worked with us through the beta process of the SDK, and we’ve tried to have one app that addresses the accessibility market, BlindSquare, and then we picked other popular apps that we think have meaningful use of text input in their design.”

Click to view slideshow.

GV Connect is a Google voice client where you can use Fleksy to send SMS messages; Wordbox is a text editor; and Launch Center Pro is “a bit of everything,” says Verdelis, with shortcuts that help people navigate iOS and get things done quicker. For these first four partners, he notes that it was important not just to get partners who would use the keyboard in interesting ways, to help showcase the possibilities for others, but to use people who helped define the product, too.

From here, Fleksy intends to continue to be selective about SDK partners and work with third-party devs to launch their integrations for a little while, but eventually the plan is to open it up for anyone to use independent of Fleksy’s involvement. Revenue for Fleksy differs depending on how each dev makes their revenue, Verdelis says, with some like Launch Center Pro trying things like offering it up as an in-app purchase and then sharing revenue from those sales, and others going for a more straightforward licensing fee.

Fleksy launched as a standalone third-party keyboard on Android out of beta last week, and Verdelis says they’ve racked up over 100,000 downloads since then. On iOS, they’ve had over 500,000 since launching their standalone app, but the SDK is the focus here in terms of business targets, so watching to see how the stable of Fleksy-using apps grows from here will be key.

We’ve seen a number of prototypes over the years where lasers are used to project a keyboard on a surface so the user could type their virtual keys so the device can recognize what is being written. But what if lasers or physical keyboards weren’t necessary at all, instead, allowing our tablets or smartphones watch our fingers to translate what we want to write? That’s exactly what Fujitsu is prototyping at Mobile World Congress this week.

The way this works is through a combination of software and a front-facing camera on a tablet. Fujitsu has developed a way for users to simply type on a flat surface, to which the tablet can recognize the location of your hands as well as what fingers are typing what key. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Acer Wants To Ship 7 Million Android Tablets And 3 Million Windows Tablets In 2013, Corning Willow Glass At Least 3 Years Away From Appearing In Consumer Products,