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Toronto Star features Minuum keyboard’s successful iPhone product launch

Whirlscape founders William Walmsley (left), Severin Smith and Xavier Snelgrove. The company is a graduate of the UTEST program's first cohort.
Whirlscape founders Will Walmsley (left), Severin Smith and Xavier Snelgrove. The company is a graduate of the UTEST program’s first cohort.

UTEST graduate Whirlscape was featured in Raju Mudhar’s Toronto Star article, “Toronto’s Whirlscape debuts tiny Minuum keyboard on iPhone,” which examines the company’s successful launch of their innovative, one-line keyboard for Apple’s iOS 8.

The UTEST program, co-directed by MaRS Innovation and the University of Toronto’s Innovations & Partnerships Office, gives nascent software companies start-up funding, office space, mentoring and business strategy support. Whirlscape was among the program’s first cohort.

The article was published October 6, 2014. Here’s an excerpt:

An Indiegogo success 18 months ago, the company created a tiny keyboard called Minuum for Android devices. Now, iOS and the vast Apple market beckoned. It required new hires, a couple months of round-the-clock development, and a practical rebuilding of their product from scratch so it could be ready to launch with iOS 8. All the work paid off: in the first two weeks of availability, they have sold more than 30,000 apps to the new iPhone audience.

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Whirlscape releases Minuum version 2.11, teases for iOS 8 launch

Minuum on iOS teaser imageWhirlscape, graduates of the UTEST program, made tech headlines last week by releasing a teaser of Minuum, their one-line, mobile keyboard for wearable devices, running on an iPhone.

The announcement and teaser gif were covered in TechCrunch, SlashGear, MobileSyrup and AndroidGuys, among other tech outlets.

From input, the Minuum blog:

We’ve embraced the design philosophies of iOS to refine Minuum into an elegant typing experience centred around our incredibly powerful autocorrect.

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CBC’s Lang and O’Leary Exchange features Whirlscape’s Minuum keyboard

Whirlscape logoUTEST graduate Whirlscape, makers of the wearable, one-line Minuum keyboard, were recently featured on CBC’s Lang and O’Leary Exchange.

Minuum has also broken the 100 billion pixels mark in screen space saved for its users. Read about it on input, the Minuum blog.

Founder and CEO Will Walmsley was interviewed by Amanda Lang. The footage was also made available on CBC News, and was included in CBC’s weekly summary of the week’s top business stories. Watch the video.

Here’s an excerpt:

Typing on a smartphone is hard enough – imagine doing it on a smartwatch or other wearable device.

A Toronto startup called Minuum is trying to solve that problem with a tiny virtual keyboard.

It’s a downloadable app costing $3.99 that combines a tiny keyboard with a powerful autocorrect that helps you get the message out, no matter how you punch it.

[. . .]

“What really drives us to work on this technology is the future potential it has. The core concept is a keyboard that is just one line of characters, which means if you can imagine typing on a line anywhere, that can be a keyboard,” he said.

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The Varsity on UTEST and start-up culture at U of T; Whirlscape launches new Minuum smartwatch demo

utest“Start-up culture is fast taking hold at U of T, with an array of incubators and accelerators providing student entrepreneurs the resources and mentorships required to get their businesses up and running,” writes Ameya Charnalia of The Varsity, the University of Toronto’s student newspaper.

Charnalia’s article focuses on new student-focused incubators, such as the UTEST program, which provide entrepreneurs cash, access to in-house expertise, working space and mentorship to advice their ideas.

It appeared in the same week that recent UTEST graduate Whirlscape released a new demo video showing their Minuum keyboard technology running on a LG G watch, which is also an Android Wear device. The announcement was covered in TechCrunch, engadget, Pocketnow, Android Police, SlashGear, BGR, Mobile Syrup, 9to5Google, and DroidLife, among other tech blogs.

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Whirlscape releases demo of Minuum keyboard on the Moto 360 circular smartwatch

Whirlscape logoAs part of their ongoing efforts to explore the future of wearable typing, UTEST grad Whirlscape released a demo of the Minuum keyboard working on a Moto 360 smartwatch.

This news builds upon Whirlscape’s activities in the wearables space; the company had previously announced a partnership with Omate Smartwatches that was covered in TechVibes.

This news was covered in the Los Angeles Times, Tech Crunch, Droid Life, Mobile Syrup, Digital Trends, SlashGear, Android Community and GigaOM. See also this article speculating on possibilities for the future of Canadian mobile wearable technology, also by Mobile Syrup.

MOTO360

Why would you need to type on a smartwatch? CEO Will Walmsley addressed the topic on input, the Minuum blog:

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Y Combinator-backed Whirlscape closes $500,000 seed funding round

Minuum keyboard creators accelerate wearable device input technology development

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Whirlscape, Inc., creators of the Minuum keyboard, closed an seed funding round of $500,000.

TORONTO, Canada (February 6, 2014) — Whirlscape Inc., creators of Minuum, “the little keyboard for big fingers,” have closed an investment seed round for just over $500,000 (USD). Y Combinator, FundersClub, BDC Venture Capital, and a dozen other prominent angel investors have contributed to the round.

Whirlscape’s plans for the capital involve innovating beyond its participation in Silicon Valley’s start-up accelerator Y Combinator. Whirlscape also aims to consolidate the success of its Minuum keyboard for Android touchscreen devices—available on Google Play—whose positive reviews have boosted sales since the New Year.

See articles of Whirlscape’s seed funding announcement by Darrell Etherington in TechCrunchIan Hardy in BetaKitRob Lewis in TechVibes and Global University Venturing.

Since launching the Minuum keyboard in 2013, Whirlscape has grown to a dedicated team of 10 working to enable new ways to type, and to unify input methods across the rapidly emerging field of wearable and ubiquitous computing devices such as smart watches and Google Glass. Whirlscape has recently demonstrated the Minuum keyboard working on Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smart watch.

“Our vision for the future of hyper-personalized input devices involves letting you choose your companion device for its input capabilities,” said Will Walmsley, CEO of Whirlscape. “By simplifying the concept of the keyboard, we allow text entry to occur in places where it was previously unthinkable, removing barriers to communication. Your keyboard can now be anywhere you want it to be, out of the way, yet immediately accessible.”

Whirlscape, Inc. was in the first cohort of UTEST, the MaRS Innovation and University of Toronto accelerator program for early-stage technologies. UTEST is now accepting applications for their third cohort.

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Whirlscape’s Minuum keyboard profiled on The Discovery Channel

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Whirlscape‘s Minuum keyboard demo on a smartwatch was profiled on The Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet on January 27, 2014.

Whirlscape Inc.’s Minuum keyboard was featured on the January 27, 2014 episode of Discovery Canada’s Daily Planet.

Lucas Cochran, Daily Planet’s technology correspondent, covered the technology that’s perfect for small devices and big fingers, noting that Minuum’s creators are successfully combating the small amount of space available on wearable technology, like smart watches.

Check out the video here. The profile, in Cochran’s Digit@l segment, begins at the 1:10 mark.

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Whirlscape releases Minuum demo on a Smart Watch

Whirlscape continues to build momentum for the Minuum keyboard. On January 21, the UTEST grad launched a demo of their keyboard on a Galaxy Gear Smart Watch.

The remarkably accurate keyboard that encourages sloppy typing for smartphones and wearable technology uses a disambiguation algorithm to make sense of any letter combination, so it’s been proven perfect for big fingers.

Xavier Snelgrove, Minuum’s co-founder and CTO, wrote a detailed explanation on the creation of the keyboard in Input, a blog by Minuum’s creators. From language models to algorithm descriptions, the post offers fans of Minuum an inside look at the science that makes the technology so user-friendly.

The Toronto-based start-up was covered by TechCrunch, TechCrunch JapanMobile Syrup and Android Police within hours of the demo’s release.

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Financial Post lists Whirlscape as Canadian Start-Up to Watch

2014 set to be big year for the start-up and UTEST grad

Whirlscape logoWhirlscape’s Minuum keyboard leads the way in Matthew Braga‘s January 5 Financial Post article highlighting promising start-ups from across Canada.

In 2013, Whirlscape’s Minuum keyboard app debuted at number 2 on Google’s Top New Paid Apps List after raising over $87,000 on an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. They’ve also been accepted into Y Combinator, a prestigious U.S. accelerator program.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Minuum’s potential goes far beyond improved touchscreen typing. The company’s so-called “one-dimensional” keyboard approach can actually be applied to a wide range of scenarios, in particular, highly touted new wearable technologies like Google Glass, and motion-sensing technologies such as Microsoft’s Kinect and the Leap Motion 3D controller, enabling users to type “anywhere.”

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