The folks behind the BlindType keyboard app for iOS and Google Android received a lot of attention when they started showing off their innovative approach to text entry. Instead of pulling up an on-screen keyboard on the bottom of the screen, BlindType actually lets you type anywhere on the screen. Using text prediction technology, it’s designed to help you along even when you’re typing in an area where you can’t see the keyboard.
BlindType also uses that same text prediction technology to help sloppy typists. If you hit letters that are close to the ones you’re aiming for, BlindType will try to make sense of the pattern and offer up the most likely words.
The app hasn’t actually been released for iOS or Android yet… and I’m starting to think the iOS version might never see the light of day, because today BlindType announced that the company has been acquired by Google. That’s good news for Android users looking for new, potentially easier ways to enter text on their phones.
It’s not clear at this point whether Google plans to bake BlindType technology into future versions of the operating system or just to offer the app as an optional download. Heck, it’s not even entirely clear if Google wants to use BlindType for Android. Maybe the company is thinking about Google Chrome OS. The good news is that it’s much more likely now that you won’t have to pay for the app once it is released.
Hopefully the acquisition doesn’t mean the iOS version is dead. It’s not like Google hasn’t release iPhone apps in the past.
You can check out a few demo videos of BlindType in action after the break.
