"It's amazing to me that we still use QWERTY keyboards," says Juan Pons, General Manager of the eastern branch of Swype, a company that makes an alternative input system for text. "At Swype, we are hoping to address and change this."

Though the keyboard is a familiar device, Pons is quick to point out that it was designed for an entirely different scenario than most people find themselves in today. The QWERTY keyboard worked well for typewriters--the layout of its keys optimized to keep the machine from getting tangled when a user typed quickly.

These days, however, people often use touchscreens, type with one hand or even one finger, and hold their devices at odd angles while they enter data. Swype hopes to create a system that fits those devices better, while still offering users enough familiarity to make them comfortable trying it out.

Pons spoke today at Blur, a conference in Orlando focused on the changing nature of human-computer interaction. He was one of many speakers aiming to take down the humble keyboard.

To use Swype, a person rubs a finger or stylus over the letters of the word she wants to type. The software's algorithms figure out what word the user intends, and inserts spaces and proper capitalization. If the software is uncertain, it offers the user a box of choices.

"You don't have to be very accurate--you can miss a lot of letters," he says.

Pons says the software works in 50 languages, and comes preloaded on nine out of ten Android phones today. The company has also made it work on devices ranging from tablets to the Wii.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft have developed an acoustic biosensor that turns an arm into a crude touch screen.

An armband, worn around the bicep, detects minute sound waves that travel through skin when it is tapped. The researchers designed a software program that can distinguish the origin of the acoustic sounds--which vary due to slight differences in underlying bone density, mass and tissue. The system then translates these locations into button commands. A pico projector embedded in the armband projects a display--a game of Tetris or button controllers--onto a user's palm or arm.

The researchers found that they were able to achieve 95.5% accuracy with the controllers when five points on the arm were designated as buttons. They will present their results at this year's CHI conference next month.

See the researchers present Skinput below.

The Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI '10) conference was held in Cambridge, MA, this week. Technologists and designers from around the world gathered to demonstrate projects exploring the blurring of physical and digital user interfaces. Here are some of the most interesting projects from the conference.

A Physically Responsive Map

This tabletop display shows 3-D shapes on a moving, flexible surface. The display changes shape in response to users' touch; for example, a map was projected onto miniature mountain ranges, and an image of the brain was contorted to reflect its shape.

"You could have an image of the body and dig into it and feel the heart beating," says MIT research assistant Daniel Leithinger, one of the creators of the project.

Interactive Art Cobots

Christian Cerrito, a graduate student at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, is developing interactive art displays with collaborative robots called cobots. One of his cobots draws yellow circles until it receives an audio sound (someone clapping or shouting, for example), and then it draws a dashed line. Another changes its designs in response to light and shadow. In the future, Cerrito says he would like to use bigger robots in a public space for an interactive art exhibit.

A Tangible, Digital Jukebox

Researchers at the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain are using this project to explore the importance of physical objects associated to music--vinyl or CDs, for example. Their tabletop display consists of an infrared camera and projector beneath a sheet of Plexiglas. Small pieces of paper with dots underneath are traced by the camera below the glass. A user can use a piece of paper as a playlist.

An Augmented Reality Pattern Table

With this multiuser, augmented reality table, users can experiment with digital and physical patterns and shapes. A projector and infrared camera beneath the table lets a user "pick up" an image or video clip with plastic tiles and remix them to make new patterns. Arranging these augmented geometric tiles could give children a fun and interactive tool to learn about mathematical shapes, according to MIT graduate student Sean Follmer.

A Soap Bubble Display

This soap bubble display was designed by Axel Sylvester from the University of Hamburg and colleagues from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

The machine spits bubbles onto a soapy surface; below, a camera tracks the bubbles, which a user can move by blowing or gently dragging a finger. Moving the bubbles lets the user control lights, or images projected onto them. "We use it to think about the materiality of tangible [objects]," says Sylvester.

Videos by Kristina Grifantini, edited by Brittany Sauser