[Retr0id]

Fun, you can type "hello world this is a test" with only one swipe needed. "swype" keyboards could be seen as a continuation of this idea. At least, I think that's the chronology? Wikipedia says Swype Inc was founded in 2002, but the keyboard product didn't release until 2009.

[juliendorra]

The blob keyboard was never publicly shown (at least not until Kocienda's book in 2018) and was quickly morphed into something else internally.

So Swype probably reinvented the idea independently (as others did too I think)

Apple did patent some swipe behaviors for keyboards at the time of the first iPhone: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8059101B2/en