BARCELONA—This starts out sounding really silly, but it has a real use. At Mobile World Congress today I encountered touch-keypad firm Swype, who said they're working on a Kinect-like version that lets you type by waving your hands in the air.
Swype, of course, are the folks with the Android smartphone keypad where you drag your finger across a whole word rather than ever picking it up. They showed me a demo based on a Nintendo Wii controller, which was amusing enough: I had to get a little blue line to track correctly across a keyboard while flicking my wrist. But the sensor-based version will be even more amusing.
The real use for this, of course, is in TV and DVR interfaces. Typing long program names on DVRs right now is a unique kind of hell, and Swype is trying to find ways to speed up the process.
Swype also showed me a new version they're working on with predictive text, for people who prefer to hunt and peck rather than Swyping. That made me realize that Swype and Nuance are now in a virtuous competitive cycle: Nuance incorporated an idea similar to Swype's in their FlexT9 keyboard, and now Swype is going after Nuance's core product, predictive text. The result, hopefully, will be better typing for everyone.