Even now, we still use the keyboard to communicate from computer to computer – websites, forums, chatrooms, instant messengers, email – and typing grows ever more important, especially with the recent boom in the usage of smartphones and mobile devices, which have replicated the keyboard in touchscreen variants. At one time, phrases like “typing speed” and “words per minute” were reserved for secretaries and data entry clerks, but not so anymore. Typing is everywhere, and information is traveling at faster rates. This means you’ll do well to keep up – your typing speed, that is.

Improving your WPM doesn’t have to be a drag, though. While there are plenty of typing games designed to improve your skills, here are three great typing-based games that you can play against your friends in real-time. Not only will you be sharpening your fingers, but you’ll have a blast all the while!

#3 – Typeracing

Typeracing is an online typing game that aims to help you improve your rate of typing. The great part of Typeracing is that it does not require you to register. All you have to do is enter a nickname and you can start playing right away.

One of the perks of playing on Typeracing is that as you race in more and more games, you’ll build up points. When you reach a certain number of points, you’ll increase in level, which will unlock different car models for you to drive. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not particularly amazing, but it’s a fun way to customize your typing experience.

All in all, Typeracing is nothing more than a simple platform for typing fun. The website has a section for testing your words-per-minute rate, as well as a single player mode for practice. For a multiplayer experience, you can set up a game and race against your friend or join a public game and race against strangers.

#2 – TypeRacer

When it comes to multiplayer typing games, TypeRacer is definitely the most popular. After launching in 2008, TypeRacer has won awards and been featured in publications, including CNet, Kotaku, and NY Magazine.

Though you can race as an anonymous guest, you can choose to register an account. By doing so, TypeRacer will track your progress and records, which serve to help you improve continually.

One of the best features of TypeRacer is that the words you type are often quotes and passages from books, movies, and songs. When you play, not only are you building up your typing speed, but you’re also being cultured.

Another great feature of TypeRacer is the ability to create private games, so you can race against your friends anytime you want.

All in all, TypeRacer is the go-to online typing game for most competitive typers. It’s popular enough that you shouldn’t have any trouble finding an opponent to race against.

#1 – Nitro Type

Nitro Type is an online typing game that takes “speed typing” to the next level. Decked out in numerous features that other typing games sorely lack, Nitro Type is clearly the most involved multiplayer typing game on the web, and the best part is that it’s FREE.

The game is currently in Beta phase, which means that you may encounter a few bugs here and there. I’ve played it a few times and have yet to run into any bugs, so it’s not bad at all in terms of stability.

You can play Nitro Type as an anonymous guest, which means you don’t need to sign up. However, by signing up, you gain access to a bunch of cool features. If you really enjoy typing races, then registration is recommended.

The coolest part of Nitro Type is that the game is more than racing with words – you get to manage a garage of cars, accessories, achievements, and more.

Every race nets you money and experience, which can be spent to purchase newer, flashier cars. Achievements give you something to work towards, the proverbial carrot-on-a-stick to spur you towards improving your typing skills.

The racing interface is the best I’ve ever seen in a multiplayer typing game. Granted, there aren’t many of these games floating around, but it does look nice. It’s like I’m really racing!

The only downside is that I haven’t been able to figure out how to run a private race. If you want to race against a friend, you’ll need to queue up at the same time. This can be a pain if you happen to get unlucky and end up in separate games.

All in all, Nitro Type takes the cake here as the best multiplayer typing game.

Do you know of any fun typing games that I missed? Share them with us in the comments!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

I’ve collected several gems from around the Web, all free, designed to help you figure out how fast (or slow) you currently type, and of course, get even better at this all-important basic computer skill.

Typing Test – KeyHero

To start things off, let’s find out how fast you type. For that, you can try using KeyHero’s Typing Test. It looks like this:

KeyHero presents you with a ready-made text, which you are to type with impeccable accuracy. If you make a mistake, it is marked, and you need to go back and correct it. The texts tend to be complex, and I even caught one that was missing some words. So my advice would be not to judge yourself after just one test; try several tests with a few different texts, and look at the average of your scores. Speaking of scores, this is what they look like:

That’s for a single session. Results for multiple sessions are shown like this:

The top graph shows WPM, words per minute, so you can see I am getting faster just by playing with KeyHero (started at around 81 WPM in the first test, and the last one was 99.2 WPM). The bottom graph shows common types of typing mistakes, so you can analyze your typing habits. I definitely have a case of bad ordering in these three tests – you can see how this type of error just gets worse and worse with each passing test.

Type Fu

Type Fu is another free utility, but it tries to do a bit more than just gauge your current performance. The main screen looks like this:

It’s a tiny screenshot but you can see the general layout. At the top of the screen is a bar showing the current lesson, as well as several buttons leading to different stats. In the middle there’s a phrase you’re supposed to type, and at the bottom there’s a keyboard (multiple layouts supported, including Dvorak and Colemak), as well as a hand diagram showing what finger you’re supposed to be using.

Once you start a lesson, the display looks like this:

You can see your errors in red, as well as your current progress through the lesson. Since I love graphs, here’s what the speed chart looks like:

The whole thing feels somewhat like a desktop app, and there are also cool typewriter-like sound effects played while you type. Lots of fun to use.

Typing Game

This next one is actually a Chrome add-on. If you like retro-style “aliens falling from the sky” games, you might enjoy typing game. Here’s what a session in progress looks like:

There’s not much to it, really. Aliens fall down from the sky, each marked with a short word. Type the word, and then alien explodes. But type it too slow, and then alien drops a bomb (as you can see above under “own”) and starts burning up your city. Once enough fires are lit, you lose. This one starts out very easy, but it does get challenging after a while. No graphs here, though.

Typing Club

Typing Club is, I think, the coolest one of this bunch, so I left it to the end. This is a well-structured array of lessons gradually taking you from novice all the way to typing ninja, with lots of stats along the way, and no ads in sight. It’s really pretty amazing.  And if you’re already a ninja, you can always skip ahead in the lessons. Here’s why a typical lesson looks like:

I can’t really convey this in a screenshot, but Typing Club is gorgeous. As you type, the letters fade in beautifully, and the whole thing just feels very slick and well-polished. Once you finish a lesson, you get a score:

You also get a report for each character used in the lesson:

And your performance is recorded in the lesson plan, Angry Birds style:

All in all, Typing Club is superbly executed. If you care about your typing, you should definitely check it out.

What’s your favorite free online typing test? Let me know in the comments!

Image Credit : ShutterStock

Out of 490 voters, 30% read only paper books, 16% prefer e-ink eReaders, 11% like the new kids on the block: the tablet eReaders, 34% use an eReader, but also enjoy a paper book from time to time, and 8% are still in the process of deciding what the best reading method is.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

While a third of the voters think eReaders are the best, another third prefer paper books. Having said that, a whopping 62% reported they use an eReader of some kind, whether exclusively or not. This means eReaders are definitely popular, but a rather large portion of the voters still don’t want nothing to do with them.

This week’s poll question is: What Do You Think About Alternative Keyboard Layouts?

If your first reaction is “what?”, you’re probably not alone. A huge majority of computer users use Qwerty as their keyboard layout; it’s the default in almost every keyboard in the world, and everyone is used to it. But there are at least two more layouts out there, Colemak and Dvorak, and according to the people who use them, they’re actually better. So what do MakeUseOf readers think of them?

If you use an alternative layout, which one do you use? What makes it better? What are the reasons for switching or for staying with Qwerty? Share your opinions!

In addition to DashExpander, there are several other text expansion programs, including TextExpander, TypeIt4Me, Typinator (which is what I use) Swift Keys and FastFox, for both Mac and PC users. All of these programs work pretty much the same way, so in this article I will share some of my favorite text expansion tips and strategies. I invite other text expander users to share their own tips in the comments section below.

Abbreviation Basics

When you assign an abbreviation to a word, phrase, or longer piece of text, you most likely want that abbreviation to represent as close as possible the word or snippet it will replace. So if your snippet is a template thank you letter, the abbreviation might be “tty”. For this article, I’m using the word “abbreviation” a lot, so the expansion I assigned is “abbt”.

You can create thousands of abbreviations like these without them interrupting your regular typing. Your text expansion utility should let you know if the abbreviation you’re using is already taken. Sometimes it’s a good idea to go through and delete abbreviations and snippets you no longer use.

So now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s look at some other ways to use text expansions.

Short Abbreviations

Contractions

If you use contractions in your writing, you can save a few keystrokes by setting up expansions for words like “can’t,” “don’t,” and “I’ll”. To save the trouble of typing the apostrophe, the abbreviation for “can’t” can be “cant” which would of course would be replaced by the correct spelling of the word. The same goes for words like “youre,” “theyre,” and “ive”.

In the case of “I’ll”, “Ill” would not be a good abbreviation because the first three letters will conflict with other words like “illustration.” But if your text expansion program has a whole word feature, you can set up the “Ill” abbreviation to expand after those three letters are typed and the space bar is pressed. I do the same thing for the pronoun, “I.” I type a lower case “i” and after I hit the space bar, it changes to uppercase. Call me lazy, but it’s a quick little time saver.

Commas

Putting a comma before an abbreviation helps make sure that it doesn’t conflict with regular words you type. For example, you could use “,add” as an abbreviation for your home address, and “,badd,” for your business address. “,date” could be used to expand the current date, if your program includes that feature.

Abbreviations

You can easily use expansions to change “pdf” to “PDF,” “osx” to “OS X,” or “dvd” to “DVD,” for example. This saves the trouble of pressing the shift key for these types of abbreviations. One of my favorites is “eg” which turns into “e.g.”.

Name Initials

You can use the initials of someone’s name for their email address, such as “clm” for “cynthialee@me.com.” When you need to remember that abbreviation, you simply think about the initials for that person’s name, followed by another letter that represents the server address.

Website URLs

I use “my” as part of the abbreviations for my blogs, social network pages, and other sites I write for. For example, “mymuo” will type the URL for my MUO author page. The same goes for “mytwitter.”

Misspelled Words

There are some words that I can never remember how to spell. Don’t ask me why, but I can never remember how to spell “convenient” correctly. So I created an expansion snippet that correctly types it for me.

Programming Codes

If you’re starting to learn and use a programming language like HTML code, you will definitely want to save lots of time by creating snippets for the codes you frequently use.

Punctuation Marks

Again, call me lazy but every time I use parentheses or double quotes, I know I will have to punch those keys twice. So to avoid the redundancy, I set up a snippet for them. When I type “(“, it automatically expands to “().” In this and other similar expansions, Typinator includes a feature for setting the position of the cursor when an snippet is expanded. So in this case, Typinator puts the cursor between the double parentheses, and I can go ahead and type the text between them.

If I want to type the “+” sign, I simply use “==” for the expansion, which saves me the trouble of using the shift key.

It may seem like a lot of trouble to set up these abbreviations and snippets, but the more you create, the more you will see a boost in your typing. Another utility program TextExpander includes is a feature that logs just how many keystrokes and time you have saved by using the utility.

So those are my tips. If you have any of your own, please add them in the comments below.

Image Credit Shutterstock

We collected 778 votes, divided as follows: 30% readers listen to a digital music collection on their computer; 22% stream music on their computers; 18% use a portable digital music player; 9% listen to radio; 6% use a CD player; 4% stream music using a Roku (or similar device); 4% watch TV music channels; 2% use a DVD player for music; while other options such as record players, MD players, retro players (grampohones and eight-tracks), portable retro players (walkmans and boom boxes) and other devices got less than 2% votes each.

Full results and this week’s poll after the jump.

Computers are the most popular home music device for MakeUseOf readers.

This week’s poll question is: How Fast Do You Type?

Those of us who spend a lot of time on our computers know that there’s often a huge gap between the typing speed of a geek and an everyday human. There’s also a wide gap between those who do two-finger typing and those who touch-type. Regardless of your usage and your method, the effectiveness of your typing is determined by how fast you can accurately type. When you write off the top of your head, how fast are you typing?

How does your typing speed change when you’re transcribing things? Do you two-finger type or touch type? What keyboard layout do you use and has it affected your typing speed? Let us know in the comments!

The opportunity to learn to type for kids is important. First of all, it’s good to type properly and not develop any bad habits which could cause a repetitive strain injury or just sloppy typing. Secondly, being able to transcribe a 2,000 word documents quicker than the competition could land your kid a job as the junior man on the account. So here are three great website that focus on “learn to type” for kids ““ in a fun and educational way.

BBC Typing Game

This is a web-based flash game (although there is a non-flash alternative) that gets your kid typing in the proper manner. It starts off by asking the child to locate “˜F’ and “˜J’ and tells them why they must position their fingers there. It then goes on to show them how to type in the proper manner including hand movements and which finger should be used for what keys.

There are four different stages with three levels in each stage. Animals such as a goat and an octopus (I guess it’s obvious why) narrate and guide your child throughout each level. As he or she progresses up through the levels, they get proportionally harder. Also, at then end of each level the little character will sing them a celebratory tune.

What I liked most about this flash game was that parents can download further challenges for their children and even print off challenges and a paper keyboard. This is really good if you want your child to practice typing but don’t want them in front of a computer screen all day.

Games – Learn To Type for Kids

This site has a section on keyboarding skills for youngsters also. I recommend this site if your child wants to get their WPM higher or just brush up on what they’ve learned so far. Much of the flash games involve typing certain letters at the right time such as Dance Mat Typing, or Cup Stacking which asks them to type certain letters in a certain order to complete the stack of cups.

Playing video games has been proven to increase WPM, so playing video games specifically designed to increase your typing speed is a good choice to get your kid typing like an ace.

FreeTypingGame.net

This site offers a wide variety of different flash games and typing challenges that will have your kid typing efficiently in no time. The first thing that will stick out for your child are of course the games. They have loads of games such as Space Invader and Keyboard Revolution. But I suggest having your child doing the typing lessons first.

These are much like the ones on the BBC site except they are for kids around the age of twelve or so who are not so easily intrigued by talking octopuses. It introduces your child to all the different keys and how to use them. You can also set challenges for your child’s WPM. Finally, they have typing tests which enable your child to see how they have progressed. A certificate can also be printed out to display your child’s achievement.

Having typing skills is very important today and still will be five or ten years down the line. Almost all administration and IT jobs require good computer fluency and a certain WPM. So why not give your child a little boost with typing just as we do with reading, writing, arithmetics and so on?

Click here for information on typing websites and courses for grown ups.

Image Attribution: poperotico

It was a mystery because at first I didn’t realize that the erratic cursor movement is caused when your hand touches the touchpad while you are typing. It can get annoying pretty quickly when all of a sudden you find that you are typing the password in the username box all because the touchpad mistook the accidental contact as tap.

If you want to know how to disable the touchpad while typing, here are the steps:

On Windows

It is pretty straightforward to disable the touchpad in Windows. The settings can be generally accessed via the control panel. Open up Mouse Settings from the control panel, move over to the Device Settings tab and you can access touchpad settings in there.

Depending on the make and model of your laptop you will find options such as ‘disable touchpad when an external USB pointing device is connected‘ which is helpful if you use a USB mouse and want to disable the touchpad when a USB mouse is connected. You can also disable the touchpad entirely from here, or you can choose to disable only the buttons.

If enabling/disabling every time you are in for a bit of typing feels like too much work, you can look into the sensitivity settings for the touchpad and lower the sensitivity a bit. Although this doesn’t solve the problem in its entirety it helps to reduce it.

On Linux

Things get a bit more involved on the Linux side. You need to make sure that xorg.conf located at (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) contains the line: SHMConfig true under the input section.

• Fire up your preferred text editor and open up /etc/x11/xorg.conf. Look for a section like:
  

  Section “Input Device”
  Identifier “Synaptics Touchpad”
  …
  End Section

• This needs to contain the line Option “SHMConfig” “true”. Note that if you are using Jaunty Jackalope you would have to create a file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi with contents as under

• If you added it to the file you need to restart the GUI. You can use Ctrl + Alt + Backspace. If that doesn’t work, just restart the system.
• Next open up the sessions manager. System > Preferences > Sessions and add an entry for syndaemon -i 1 -d. You can use man syndaemon to check out additional options like.

That should just about do it.  Syndaemon monitors the keyboard and as soon as you start typing it disables the tapping and scrolling action (according to the options you choose) on the touchpad. This means that you can still move the cursor, only you wouldn’t be able to accidentally tap it and thus wander off to another line.

I really like the Linux solution. You don’t have to do anything, it detects that you are typing and disables the tapping and scrolling while still letting you to move around the cursor and use the touchpad buttons to click. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a similar solution for Windows.

Maybe you are aware of one? Let us know in the comments how do you tackle the problem.