Airdate:
August 14, 2000
MP3
Audio of Interview - 2.7 megs
CEOcast
(Michael Wachs): Good day. This is Michael Wachs with CEOcast.
I'm
here today with Edgar Matias. Edgar is President and Chief Executive
Officer of Matias Corporation, a company based in Toronto and one
that is renowned for its applications for the Half Keyboard.
Thanks
for joining CEOcast today, Edgar.
Edgar
Matias: Thank you. Glad to be here.
CEOcast:
I thought perhaps you could begin by giving our audience an overview
of the company, and then we'll get into your Half Keyboard technology,
which allows fast text entry on cellphone devices.
Edgar
Matias: Okay. We're a startup company, and we've developed a new
keyboard technology that allows people to type with one hand using
their existing skills, on a keyboard that's very similar to a standard
keyboard.
CEOcast:
Why is there such a need for this product?
Edgar
Matias: You have the basic problem where we've gotten to the point
where we can reduce the size of pretty much all the hardware on a
computer.
You
can reduce the display. You can reduce all the electronics. You can
reduce the size of the hard drive. The only thing you can't reduce
is the size of your hand.
So this
is a way . . . instead of reducing the size of the keyboard, we just
use half of an existing keyboard, and our patented technology for
remapping the keyboard allows you to use the same sized keys — exact
same sized keys — on something that's roughly the size
of a cellphone.
CEOcast:
Now what kinds of applications are there for this?
Edgar
Matias: There's actually a lot of different applications. The
first application we see is as a keyboard for an information appliance
or a PDA.
One
product we have in development is a Half Keyboard for the Palm.
Since it's a one-handed keyboard, you also can use the pen at the
same time, so you can one hand on the keyboard, the other hand on
the pen.
If you're
taking notes in this manner, you can type and you can also draw diagrams,
or highlight text and make changes, without moving your hand between
the keyboard and the mouse, or the keyboard and the pen. You just
keep one hand on each device and that eliminates the back and forth
homing time.
CEOcast:
Edgar, what's out there today and how is this different?
Edgar
Matias: Out there today, there are a couple of external keyboards
that are sold for the Palm. Palm actually makes one. It's a collapsable
keyboard. It's a pretty good product but there are a few problems
. . .
One
of them is the size. It's quite thick — when you collapse
it, it's about an inch thick — to have that in your
pocket. There are couple of other third party manufacturers that make
similar types of products.
CEOcast:
Now, as you look at the technology, how does it work?
Edgar
Matias: Like I said, it's half a keyboard. You take half a keyboard;
you eliminate the keys from the other half, and you type on it just
like you would on a normal keyboard, so it's just like normal typing.
You don't have to learn anything for the letters of the hand that
you're using to type.
When
you want to do the letters of the other hand, instead of using the
other hand, you hold down the spacebar with your thumb. And when you
do that, it takes all the letters from the missing side of the keyboard
and maps them onto the keyboard that remains — the
side that you're typing on — in the same pattern as
before. So you're using the same hand and finger movements as you
would if you were typing with both hands, except now you just use
the one hand.
Typing
speeds are anywhere from 61% to 91% of what a two-handed typist would
be able to do. Most people get up to around 80%. We've tested people
who actually got as high as 64 words a minute with one hand,
which is pretty fast.
CEOcast:
Now, why wouldn't a pen or compact keyboard based hand device work?
Edgar
Matias: The main problem with those is speed.
When
you're typing with a pen or with a compact keyboard, you're basically
using your whole hand to type one letter at a time. Whereas, if you're
touch typing, all the fingers move independently and you don't have
to look at the keyboard layout, so it's all done subconsciously. You
can type a lot faster.
Typing
with a pen, you typically get anywhere from around 10 to about 22,
23 words a minute. Whereas our device, an average typist could easily
get over 30 words a minute, and over time they'd get up to (likely)
in the 50 to 70 word per minute range. So, it's a huge speed difference.
Give you an example . . .
You
might be familiar with the RIM pager. It's a small pager with a miniature
keyboard on it, and it allows you to send and receive email. If you
know anybody who has one of these things and you send them an email,
you'll typically get back a very short response — usually
2 or 3 words — just because it's so slow to type a
long response.
With
a device like ours, you could put a Half Keyboard on a cellphone
and be able to type 64 words a minute on something the size of your
cellphone, and you wouldn't need to carry around a pager anymore.
It would just be built into your cellphone and when you get your email,
you just reply to it right away, and it's almost as fast as typing
on a full-sized keyboard.
CEOcast:
As you look at applications, I would think that the PDAs, such as
the Palm and the Handspring would be perfect devices for this. What's
your strategy there?
Edgar
Matias: We plan on putting out a keyboard for the Palm and the
Handspring. It'll work in conjunction with the pen, so you'd be able
to do word processing on those devices.
One
of the criticisms actually of the keyboards that are out there now
is that the PalmOS is really not designed to be used only with a keyboard.
It's designed to be used with a pen, primarily. So, with our device
you can still use the pen and have the benefit of the keyboard as
well.
CEOcast:
As you look at the other types of applications for this, what kinds
of applications might there be?
Edgar
Matias: I've already mentioned the Internet cellphone. That's
a huge, huge market. Lots of companies want to be able to do those
types of devices, and it's not clear yet how they're going to do it
because . . .
There's
problems with screen size and text entry speed. The RIM pager is one
approach. We don't think it's the one that'll win, in the end. We
think that . . . there's a large number of people out there who know
how to touch type, and they're going to want to be able to do that
on their cellphone. With our device, they can do that.
Another
market that we're going to be pursuiing as well is the wearable computing
market. You might've seen some of the products that are out there
now, where you're wearing a head-mounted display and a keyboard and
battery back. Some of them have voice input. We have a design that's
actually a lot simpler . . .
You'd
mount a device like a PalmPilot — you could use a PalmPilot — to
one wrist, the wrist you'd have your wrist watch on, and you mount
the Half Keyboard on the other wrist. Just run a wire between
the two, and you basically have a wearable computer.
Your
hands are free when you're not using it, because it's just strapped
to your wrist. When you want to do text entry, you just assume the
typing position and type away. You also have the pen there as well,
so if you need to do graphical input, that's possible as well.
CEOcast:
You recently received a capital infusion from Transpacific Resources,
in its partial exercise of an option to acquire 25% of the company.
What is the stretegy in terms of employing those?
Edgar
Matias: We're going to use the funds to do the design and get
started on the marketing and manufacturing of the product, and . .
. we expect to have product available for sale in mid-November, in
time for the Christmas buying season . . . and the funds that we got
from them are enough to do that.
CEOcast:
From a manufacturing perspective, what will be your strategy there?
Edgar
Matias: We already have manufacturers in place, that we're going
to be using. We'll put out the product. We're going to be hiring a
marketing person to do the marketing of the product, and we have several
magazines that are very interested in doing reviews. So, they're anxiously
awaiting prototype units to test.
CEOcast:
As you look at some of the wireless opportunities here, how does the
cellphone fit in with this?
Edgar
Matias: For the Internet cellphone design to be done . . . would
require a strategic partnership with a cellphone company. So, we'd
have to licence it out to a company that's in that market . . . somebody
like Nokia or Motorola or Ericsson, one of those. They're the larger
ones, and they're all looking to do Internet cellphones.
So,
to do the Internet cellphone, we would need to establish a strategic
partnership with a company like that.
CEOcast:
How does a relatively small company, such as yourselves, market a
device with such a huge market potential?
Edgar
Matias: There's lots of ways. We're actually in a similar position
to the one Palm was in back in 1995.
They
were also a small company and they had a good idea and they grew very
fast, and word of mouth was one of the ways that they grew so fast.
They
started making sales, just like we will . . . once the word starts
to spread of the benefits of our product (as was with theirs), it'll
just snowball.
We're
also marketing through various media and we'll be doing reviews. We're
having several magazines do reviews of the product . . .
CEOcast:
What's the next milestone for the company, Edgar?
Edgar
Matias: The next milestone is to get sellable product.
We expect
to have working prototypes by October, and then we'll be seeding magazines
with prototypes so that they can do reviews. And then the next big
milestone after that is having the sellable product and starting to
make sales, which'll happen in mid-November or so.
CEOcast:
Well, I've been speaking today with Edgar Matias.
Edgar
is President and Chief Executive Officer of Matias Corporation, a
company that is closely held and based in Toronto, and one that seeks
to change the way companies communicate, as its Half Keyboard
technology allows fast text entry on cellphone-sized devices, using
merely touch-typing skills.
Edgar,
thanks for joining CEOcast today.
Edgar
Matias: Thank you very much.
CEOcast:
This has been Michael Wachs for CEOcast — where Wall
Street listens.
