Whirlscape, makers of the Minuum keyboard, have developed a small, predictive keyboard for Will.i.am’s wearable Puls cuff. The company is a graduate of the UTEST program‘s first cohort.

The Puls, announced by the musician and entrepreneur on Wednesday, October 15, 2014 at the Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, is expected to be released in time for the 2014 holiday season.

The Puls announcement and Whirlscape’s involvement were covered by Mashable.

Mashable’s Karissa Bell describes how Whirlscape’s keyboard integrates with the Puls:

Puls uses a small predictive keyboard that fits in the very bottom section of the screen. The keyboard was developed by Minuum, the Y Combinator-backed company that has also developed keyboards for Android Wear and Google Glass.

Typing on the tiny screen takes some getting adjustment but text input was surprisingly fast and accurate, though words like “Dreamforce” gave its predictive abilities some trouble. Like much of the rest of the device, keyboard functions are gesture-controlled. Swipe over letters and the keyboard predicts the words you want, a swipe to the right enters a space while a swipe to the left deletes your last character. It’s definitely not perfect but it’s efficient given the tiny amount of screen real estate.

The Puls is a competitor to smartwatches that acts as a social media interface, music and video player, and as a telephone.

Beyond the Puls, Whirlscape is also involved in several smartwatch products. See the Minuum news archive for more details.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, director of marketing and communications.