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Swype creator outs Dryft - an 80-word-per-minute tablet keyboard that adjusts to your hands

Sep 10, 2013, 2:38 AM

Daniel P.

Swype creator outs Dryft - an 80-word-per-minute tablet keyboard that adjusts to your hands

Promises about virtual keyboards that will make you taller, smarter, richer and increase your keying speed to that of a typist during the Great Depression are a dime a dozen these days, but when they come from one of the Swype creators, Randy Marsden, we ought to listen.

Dryft is a new way to touch-type on your tablet, which actually adjusts to the individual span of your fingers, unique for each person. The creators promise up to 80 words per minute on the touchscreen, as you will be using the natural position of your hands instead of adjusting to a keyboard with predetermined letter and symbol positions.

The keyboard actually uses your tablet's built-in accelerometer to determine the positions of your fingers, getting more accurate with each pecking you do. It even adjusts when you are just resting your fingers on the screen, keeping the J and F "home row" keys right underneath the respective fingers they are supposed to hit, but without registering any key strokes.

Dryft will be ready in 2014 and the creators are already patenting the technology, planning to license it for all major operating systems, so we might see it in anything ranging from the new Nexus 7, through the iPad 5, to the Sony Vaio Tap 11 next year.