typing posts

Time Waster - Fast140 aka "How Badly and Fastly can you type?"

by Drew Olanoff Apr 14th 2009

So you think you can type fast, eh?

Not soooooooo fast. Here comes Fast140.

What is it you ask? Well, it recycles tweets from Twitter and turns them into a speed typing game. No longer will you be testing your speed to mundane and correctly spelled sentences like "The dog ran quickly.", now you get stuck with winners like the one pictured above.

Uhhh, I'm sorry what? I have to type........."Hero" by Enrique Iglesias? YES, I did. Ugh! Now that's a time waster my friends. And I loved every damn second of it.

This gem of an app comes via Philip Kaplan, aka "Pud", the fellow who brought us ummm....Effed Company. I can say Effed, right? I got the inside scoop by pinging him on Twitter naturally:

Tags: easter, fast140, game, philip kaplan, PhilipKaplan, pud, timewaster, twitter, typing

Filed under: Windows, Productivity, Freeware

KA Type In Goes Ground & Pound on Tiresome Typing

by Lee Mathews Jul 21st 2008

Few things are as frustrating as having to repeat yourself over, and over, and over - like typing the same thing all the time. It's a pain in the butt. Fortunately, KA Type In is the hemorrhoid relief you've been looking for!

Here's what we like about it: 1) it's under 1MB to download 2) it has a portable mode 3) it's free 4) it's easy to use...and last, but certainly not least, 5) it's a massive time-and-effort saver.

Install it, move your mouse to the side of your screen, and the Type In windows slides in to view. Single click on one of your snippets and it's sent to the active application. But wait, it gets better! You can code fill-in fields and be prompted for values to input on-the-fly. This is an awesome way to make all your code snippets portable - take Type In with you on your flash drive and use them in any editor, even a browser-based HTML editor like FCK.

And get this: it does auto-completion with a single keystroke. Set up a snip, type the first few letters, and hit ctrl+; and Type In does the rest. Take that, inefficiency!

It's a 6MB process that uses almost no CPU, and it has so many possible applications that anyone can benefit from using it. Windows only, which makes us a little sad - this app is so sweet, everyone should be able to use it!

Tags: autocomplete, macros, portable app, PortableApp, typing

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Web services, Time-Wasters, web 2.0

TypeRacer: Competitive typing test - Time Waster

by Brad Linder Apr 29th 2008

You probably think you're hot stuff because you can type 90+ words per minute. But how well do you perform when you've got a couple of other speed typists hot on your heels? While competitive typing isn't likely to hit the Olympics, or even ESPN2 anytime soon, TypeRacer is an online game that makes typing speed tests a bit more interesting by letting you see how your skills stack up against others.

TypeRacer asks you to type a relatively short snippet of text, which may be a quote from a book, movie, or something else you can purchase on Amazon (the site is designed to make money by getting you to click on Amazon affiliate links). As you're typing, a little car will move across the screen and you can see other drivers/typists racing. New races start pretty regularly so you should only have to wait a few seconds to join a race.

Just remember, if you spend too much time eying the competition, you're going to fall behind and then you'll never make the high scores list.

[via AppScout]

Tags: tweet-this, typeracer, typing, typing-speed

Filed under: Fun, Internet

Keybr - The joy of typing

by Romeo Wahed Jan 8th 2008

Typing at the speed of... typing. Keybr.

Have you ever wished for a way to practice typing so that you may become a more efficient and capable keyboard jockey? Typing at the "speed of thought," perhaps? Well so did we, but we also didn't want to bother downloading anything so that we could achieve this fickle daydream of ours. Enter Keybr, the flash based type instructor you've been waiting for.

Keybr is very straight-forward, and honestly, quite ingenious. You can choose from three basic lessons that start with a certain number of keys on the keyboard, and then, as you progress through the lessons, more keys are added to the mix to make things a little tougher. As a nice touch, it keeps live track of all your mistakes and your words-per-minute (wpm), and even creates graphs of your performance.

But, things get better yet. Once you deem that the lessons have nothing left to offer you, get ready to play with custom mode, where you can edit the text that you want to practice. Very bare-bones, but oh-so functional.

The best part of all this may be that Keybr supports a surprising amount of different keyboard layouts. Everything from international keyboards (French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian) to regional and alternative variations - such as Dvorak, UK layouts, and others.

And although Keybr does not have games or other fancy gimmicks that might make the experience more exciting or visually stimulating, as far as free, flash-based typing programs go, you will agree that this one is rather good.

[via Webware]

Tags: flash, internet, practice, speed, typing

Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters

Maximum Typing - Today's Time Waster

by Brad Linder Mar 2nd 2007

Sometimes we all need a little practice with our typing, and it's nice to see someone kick some butt while we're at it. Pepsi is promoting Pepsi Nex -- a soft drink sold in Japan -- with Maximum Typing. It's a pretty nifty online typing game, in the vein of QWERTY Warriors.

Instead of zapping enemies by typing letters though, as you type in the letter or combination of letters on an ice cube, the little guy on the left of the screen rushes up and punches, kicks, knees, or otherwise pummels the cube to smithereens. In between stages he has a tendency to take a swig from a bottle. I'm going to assume that it's Coca-Cola.

[via Digital Inspiration]

Tags: coke, keyboard, maximum typing, MaximumTyping, pepsi, typing

Filed under: Fun, Games, Kids, Text, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Time-Wasters

Finger Frenzy - Today's Time Waster

by Jason Clarke Jan 6th 2007

This is probably the most simple Time Waster we've ever featured, but it's one that can be terribly addictive, particularly if you can get friends or co-workers involved. It's called Finger Frenzy, and the game is ridiculously basic. All it does is measure how quickly you can type the alphabet - that's it.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to type the alphabet quickly and accurately. The letters don't roll off the fingers like you might think, since they're not in orders that commonly occur in written language. It makes the game far more challenging than you might imagine it to be.

And with a game that takes only 5 (or less) seconds to play, that's really all I have to say about it. Oh - post your scores in the comments. Mine is still too embarrassing to mention (over 8 seconds) but I haven't had a chance to practice yet.

Tags: alphabet, Finger Frenzy, FingerFrenzy, Time Waster, TimeWaster, typing, typing game, typing the alphabet, TypingGame, TypingTheAlphabet

Filed under: Fun, Games, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Time-Wasters

QWERTY Warriors - Today's Time Waster

by Jordan Running Nov 7th 2006

I've never really thought that "keyboarding," "game," and "fun" went in the same sentence, but QWERTY Warriors--itself a snicker-inducing title--has proven me wrong. It's a fast-paced Flash typing game in which you must annihilate advancing enemies by typing the words that appear next to them. The game is played in a top-down view with you, a lone soldier, in the center. Typing the word that appears next to an enemy will make you turn and fire on it, usually destroying it. Mistype the word and you don't fire. If the enemy gets within firing range it will--what else--start firing, and you'd best dispatch it quickly. As you advance through the game the words you must type get longer and the enemies get more formidable, able to move faster and fire across longer distances. Fortunately, there are occasional power-ups that replenish your health and dispatch multiple enemies at once, but these must be activated with their own, longer words. QWERTY Warriors has four difficulty levels so you should have no trouble getting into it no matter your keyboarding skills, and if you play the game long enough you're all but guaranteed to improve your typing speed.

Tags: flash, free, freeware, fun, game, keyboarding, qwerty, qwerty warriors, QwertyWarriors, speed, timewaster, typing

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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