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Daily Mac App: Typingstats
Typing- whether it's writing a blog post or responding to an email, almost everyone with a computer has to type. So why not make it fun? One way to liven up your typing experience is to use the small utility Typingstats. Typingstats is an OS X app that sits in your menu bar and keeps track of your keystrokes. It counts them for you and calculates your words per minute while you type. If you don't like words per minute, you can choose words per second, keystrokes per second, or keystrokes per minute. It's system-wide, so it tracks your typing in your web browser, email client and text editor. The app keeps a history of your keystrokes and produces a nice graph that shows your typing count each day. As expected, my graph is steady during the week and drops off during the weekend. Besides keystroke count and words per minute, the app also tracks which key you press most often. For me, it's the spacebar and sometimes the letter "a". You can keep your keystroke count to yourself or upload it to an online leaderboard where you can compete to become the typing king (or queen). Uploading does require you to sign up for an online Typingstats account. The app isn't 100% accurate. It only counts keystrokes and not words. The app assumes each word is five characters, so your word per minute count is an approximation. Typingstats also counts every keystroke, including command, option and control, so a simple copy and paste can be calculated as a word. For me, a close approximation is good enough. I enjoy watching the keystroke count go up each day and the wpm count fluctuate as I type. Typingstats is a fun utility for people who make their living typing or are just interested in knowing how much they type. If you're concerned about privacy (the app does track your keystrokes), you can open the app only when you're typing information that's not sensitive. The app is available in the Mac App Store for 99-cents.
A typing tutor for the iPhone
A while back, we reported on a study that (not only had all kinds of holes in it, but) claimed the iPhone's keyboard was two times slower than other phones. But as many commenters said, the keyboard just requires practice.And there's no better way to get it than to jump into a typing tutor. We've seen one before for the iPhone, but reader Travis (thanks!) sent us a tip about TypingWeb.com's free iPhone tutor (just go to their site on your iPhone, and enter some information to create an account), and I was impressed by how smoothly it worked. During the Basic test, I moved pretty quickly-- a nice 36 words per minute. But on the Advanced test, they throw all kinds of things at you (including intentionally misspelled words, so you have to dodge Apple's corrections), and I dropped down to about 16 wpm.Definitely worth a try. A lot of iPhone typing seems to be situation-- moving around in a car or bus, for instance, makes things a lot harder. But at least this will give you a ballpark figure of your typing prowess.
BookMuncher software enables speed-reading on your mobile
Having e-reader functionality on your mobile or handheld certainly isn't new, but a British company is developing software that will reportedly allow you to breeze through War and Peace at an astounding "300 words-per-minute." The company utilizes Rapid Serial Visualization Presentation (RSVP) to display text in "word by word" fashion mid-screen, which forces your brain to simply "absorb" the word rather than read and then subvocalize (that's the real time waster, folks) before moving on. The company claims that the science behind the speed-reading revolution is "word shape recognition," which differs from the relationship between letters that we're used to looking for. While there's no set release date nor price for the mobile version, a comparable PC-ready version goes for £20 ($38), and we're sure this miracle-working software will have you blasting through Engadget's front page in just a matter of milliseconds whenever it becomes available.
