Media Releases

Minuum to end battle between mobile screen space and keyboards

March 18, 2013

TORONTO, ON — Whirlscape Inc., a Cana­di­an tech start-up, has devel­oped Min­u­um, “the lit­tle key­board for big fin­gers.”

Min­u­um is a tiny, one-dimen­sion­al key­board that frees up mobile screen space while allow­ing fast, accu­rate typ­ing. Its spe­cial­ized, patent-pro­tect­ed auto-cor­rec­tion algo­rithm cor­rects high­ly impre­cise typ­ing. This algo­rithm, based on the touch­screen and wear­able device research of com­pa­ny founders, Will Walm­s­ley (researcher) and Khai Truong (asso­ciate pro­fes­sor) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, con­fig­ures the dif­fer­ence between what you type and what you mean, in real time, get­ting it right even if you miss every sin­gle let­ter.

Watch Walm­s­ley demon­strate the Min­u­um key­board in their Indiegogo cam­paign video.

“While our mobile devices are becom­ing smarter and faster, the key­board has coast­ed into the 21st cen­tu­ry essen­tial­ly unchanged from the days of the type­writer; now we’re stuck with key­boards that cov­er up half a smart­phone screen but don’t make up in accu­ra­cy what they take up in screen space,” says Will Walm­s­ley, CEO of Whirlscape. “Real­iz­ing we could min­i­mize the key­board while main­tain­ing accu­ra­cy was the eure­ka moment. We’ve changed what a key­board needs to be, enabling a future of typ­ing with wear­able tech­nol­o­gy.”

Min­u­um improves mobile typ­ing by:

  • Recov­er­ing more than half of the usable touch­screen space lost when typ­ing on tra­di­tion­al vir­tu­al key­boards
  • Allow­ing for fast, accu­rate text entry when typ­ing is slop­py
  • Pro­vid­ing let­ter mag­ni­fi­ca­tion for pre­cise typing—especially use­ful for large fin­gers
  • Respect­ing user famil­iar­i­ty with the exist­ing QWERTY key­board
  • Pro­vid­ing con­ve­nient access to every­thing users expect in a key­board (such as punc­tu­a­tion, space, back­space and enter) with­out steal­ing screen space
  • Let­ting you type anywhere—with a key­board you can move around your touch­screen.

The Min­u­um touch­screen key­board is the first step of the Min­u­um project, which seeks to bring sim­pli­fied typ­ing to mobile and wear­able devices. The Min­u­um lay­out is “one-dimen­sion­al” because it presents a con­tin­u­um of let­ters, laid out in a row. The sim­plic­i­ty, size, and accu­ra­cy of Min­u­um make it the per­fect key­board to fit into the future of wear­able com­put­ing. While the first imple­men­ta­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy is for smart­phones and tablets, its type-any­where impli­ca­tions are far-reach­ing.

To bring a tiny, user-friend­ly, accu­rate key­board to mobile devices and give users back their screen space,Whirlscape is aim­ing to raise $10,000 on Indiegogo from March 18 to April 17, 2013. The cam­paign will fund the launch of an Android key­board app, along with an iOS (iPhone, iPad) key­board for devel­op­ers to put into their apps.

The Min­u­um key­board­’s beta ver­sion will be avail­able for tech­nol­o­gy jour­nal­ists to test for free in June 2013.

An FAQ is avail­able on the Min­u­um web­site along with back­ground infor­ma­tion, tech­ni­cal details, prod­uct spec­i­fi­ca­tions, pho­tos, and more details about Min­u­um’s wear­able com­put­er appli­ca­tions: minuum.com/mediaroom.

About Whirlscape Inc.
Based in Toron­to, Ontario, Whirlscape is a Cana­di­an high-tech­nol­o­gy start-up with roots in human-com­put­er inter­ac­tion. Its prod­uct offer­ings address typ­ing errors in wide­spread appli­ca­tions like e‑mail and text mes­sag­ing (SMS), ini­tial­ly through alter­na­tive key­boards on Android devices with planned exten­si­bil­i­ty to iOS (iPhone, iPad) and oth­er plat­forms or OEM devices. Found­ed in June 2012, Whirlscape has received seed fund­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty ofToron­to Ear­ly Stage Tech­nol­o­gy (UTEST) pro­gram and MaRS Inno­va­tion. Whirlscape is engaged in devel­op­ing ful­ly func­tion­al Min­u­um key­boards for Android, incor­po­rat­ing touch­screen entry and motion-con­trolled modes. The com­pa­ny is also pro­to­typ­ing wear­able typ­ing devices to test its tech­nol­o­gy to its lim­its.

Image with cap­tion: “The Min­u­um key­board: “the lit­tle key­board for big fin­gers.” Designed by Whirlscape Inc., this one-dimen­sion­al, tiny key­board frees up mobile screen space while allow­ing fast, accu­rate typ­ing. (CNW Group/Whirlscape Inc.)”. Image avail­able at:http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20130318_C5728_PHOTO_EN_24617.jpg

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For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Maria Liouta­ia
maria@whirlscape.com
Tel: 647–406-0297