Thursday, September 11, 2008

Swype: Changing text messaging as we know it

Swype

Swype, not to be confused with Skype, is a new and possibly revolutionary product that will make text messaging a lot simpler and faster.

Swype allows you to type out your text messages by connecting the dots. All you need to do is put your finger or stylus on a touchscreen keyboard, and “Swype” it along the word that you need to spell. In case you want to see Swype in action, I included a YouTube video that you can view after the jump.

This new interface can somehow recognize words and will automatically put in spaces, making the spacebar a thing of the past. It was developed by Cliff Kushler, a developer of the T9 text entry system that most of us use on our text messaging in order to avoid hitting the same button more than once for a different letter.

Kushler demonstrated this product and could type a fast 50 words per minute, which is pretty fast in terms of texting. I’m sure that if this ever gets put into production, teenagers will be able to double that, one handed.

The designers plan on implementing Swype on Windows Mobile, in order to put it on touchscreen phones. Unfortunately, we don’t have a projected time when they plan to do this.

Via [Gizmodo]

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