Still typing one letter at a time? That’s so 20th century. A new innovation is “chording”—typing entire words by touching multiple keys at once, just like a musician playing a chord on a piano.
Plano-based CharaChorder launched in 2019 with a new class of peripheral device that let people type faster than what’s possible on a traditional keyboard. The company’s goal: to completely replace the QWERTY keyboard. Last year, it launched CharaChorder Lite.
But now it’s released a workaround that people can use with their existing keyboard: CharaChorder X, a new USB dongle which “transforms any keyboard into a chording enabled device.” The dongle was launched November 22 on Kickstarter, reaching 100% funding within two hours of its release.
Unlike the startup’s previous products, CharaChorder X doesn’t require users to replace their keyboards. Instead, the dongle plugs in-line to enhance existing keyboards, via CharaChorder’s intelligent chording technology.
The startup and its CEO, Riley Ford Keen, call CharaChorder X “a major step towards empowering ordinary people to incorporate chording into their daily life.”
CharaChorder believes the dongle will help achieve its mission of boosting average human text transmission speed from 40 words per minute up to a blazing 250 words per minute—”or how we define the speed of thought.”
Get on the list.
Dallas Innovates, every day.
Sign up to keep your eye on what’s new and next in Dallas-Fort Worth, every day.
R E A D N E X T
-
Plano ISD partners with Capital One for the Savings Success program to take some of the myths out of money and turn them into financial facts.
-
Activate Games says it offers "the next level in entertainment, fitness, and gaming." Its six locations in Canada and the U.S. have up to 11 rooms with laser mazes, touch-activated climbing walls, arcade-style target walls, light-flashing basketball hoops, and more—with your score tracked by an RFID bracelet. You can "put your brain and body to the test" when the new Plano location opens by as soon as the end of this year.
-
Seoul-based SK Signet said its new Plano facility will produce a range of fast-charging solutions, including providing the first U.S.-manufactured ultra-fast chargers and power cabinets that offer more than 350kW of power. Expected to reach full capacity by July 2023, the facility will bring up to 183 highly skilled jobs and produce more than 10,000 fast chargers per year.
-
Co-founded by Cesar Millan and two IoT-pioneering brothers, the startup sells the Halo Collar—a dog collar that stores up to 20 GPS wireless smart fences, with dog-training tech built in. Founded in 2018, the company has raised around $25 million to date, mostly through this latest Series B. According to Millan, "This funding will accelerate our mission of no more lost dogs, while at the same time, allow more dogs to follow, play, and explore every day."
-
Carmack—the former CTO of VR giant Oculus—has taken goggle-gazing to the next level, programmed Doom and Quake, and founded a Mesquite-based space tourism startup. Now he's on a mission he says "could change the course of human history": artificial general intelligence. Keen's focus on AGI could lead to "something that behaves like a human being or like a living creature, and that can then be educated in whatever ways that we need to," he says. Carmack believes AGI will hit the market in less than a decade. enabling AIs to interact socially with each other—or with actual people.
