CTIA Round-up: T9 creators reengineer text input

It may have been the day before the CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment officially kicked off, but the industry was certainly active, even if the show floor was still empty. Perhaps the most interesting technology news, however, didn’t occur at CTIA at all but at nearby Tech Crunch50: the creators of the now ubiquitous T9 text input platform let loose what they claim will be the next evolutionary step in text interface.

The creator of Tegic’s—now Nuance Communications'-T9 predicative text technology Cliff Kushler has founded a new company called Swype that has developed a touch-screen Qwerty keyboard interface that uses one continuous or stylus motion across the soft keys to produce a continuous stream of text—as fast as 50 words per minute, depending on the deftness of the hand.

Swipe claims the application will become a fundamental technology advance in text input akin to the invention of the Qwerty keyboard and predicative text itself, which powers text input in more than 3 billion phones. That may seem like a lofty claim, but so far many in the tech industry are lending that statement weight. After the technology’s unveiling the tech blogosphere filled not only with good reviews but palpable excitement about Swype (take this story in CNET for instance). Swype has yet to land any operator deals for the OS-level interface, but a lot of iPhone users are almost willing Steve Jobs to adopt the software in the next release of Apple’s wireless gadgets.

Back at Wireless IT, the carriers were fairly active as vendors set up their booths. Both AT&T and Verizon Wireless launched paid social network platforms using Intercasting’s aggregation platform, Anthem. In addition, Verizon Wireless made the first official day of the show “programming day,” announcing a host of new V Cast on-demand video content including full-episode programs from BET. And Alltel is offering its customers mobile avatars. The remaining carrier to unveil new services on Tuesday was more of a surprise. Pivot may be dead, but that hasn’t stopped Comcast from pursuing a mobile strategy.