the flairify blog

How to Type on the iPad mini

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:23:00 -0500

The iPad mini’s 7.9 inch screen equates to 29.6 square inches of screen area. Compare this to the full sized iPad’s 9.7” inch screen (and 45.2 square inches of screen area) and you’ll see that the mini has a 65% reduction in size.

Apple’s approach to scaling the iPad mini has been simple. Every single screen element that was full-sized on the 9.7” iPad is now 65% smaller. This consistency ensured that third party developers had zero work to do to make their apps iPad mini compatible.

But what does this smaller size mean for typing? Despite the common misconception that the 9.7” iPad is difficult to type on because it’s “too small”, its virual keyboard it is actually very slightly larger than the keyboard on most laptops. Therefore TapTyping has always recommended people invest time in learing the correct 10 fingered approach to typing on the full sized iPad. Even though it seems strange at first, a proper typing style always pays dividends in long term productivity.

But what about the iPad mini? After a full month of dedicated use, I have found that the correct typing style on the iPad mini is still 10 fingered. There are two reasons this is the case:

Once you’ve trained your muscle memory for keyboards-in-general, each finger instinctively knows which letters it should reach for. Using one mapping of keys-to-fingers on one type of keyboard and another on a different keyboard is counterproductive. In fact you’ll probably end up undoing some of your muscle memory. Your existing know-how can scale to new devices and it’s a shame to waste it.
The iPad mini’s keyboard is smaller but not too small. There may be only 1/3 of the horizontal space available to hover your 10 fingers over the home row, but there still is space. Apple struck a perfect balance with the 7.9” size giving us a device that is extremely comfortable to hold while still being usable. If they had gone much smaller the keyboard would approach the iPhone or even Nexus 7 situation where there really just isn’t room to hover two hands.

For some people, tweaks might be necessary. I find myself dancing my inactive hand out of the way to make room for the other hand while its making a keystroke. I can tell that this slight shimmy slows me down, but not so much that I can’t still reach a respectable 50 words per minute.

As always, the key is practice. I recommend firing up TapTyping and doing some of the intermediate lessons on your mini. Pay particular attention to the heat maps after each page showing you where you’re making your mistakes. In may case, I kept hitting the space bar a bit too high causing an annoying typo. Once I got that straighted out, my speed ramped up dramatically. Happy typing!

Introducing Wanderous

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:54:00 -0400

I’m proud to announce a brand new Flairify app called Wanderous.

Wanderous is a navigation app that creates routes optimized for adventure. As is the case with all navigation apps, routes created in Wanderous start and end where you specify. Here’s the twist: during the journey the routes intentionally wander to one or more interesting, unique, or notable spots of your choosing. These spots can include parks, landmarks, historical sites, busy city corridors, scenic vistas, and public attractions.

We live in an exciting time. Mobile devices are being used to enrich our experience of the world in ways that are unprecedented in human history. I believe Wanderous is just scratching the surface of what’s possible. I hope you’ll join in the adventure.

The New iPad

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:26:00 -0400

The latest iPad is truly amazing. The retina screen makes reading and writing text an absolute joy. Images are more vibrant, fonts are gorgeous, and every piece of UI is lively and crisp. What’s more: even though there are four times more pixels on the screen, and even though the device now powers twice as much RAM, the battery life and price have remained the same.

Since the iPad’s release two years ago it has been my favorite gadget. Yet only in the past few days have I begun to see what people mean when they call it revolutionary. As Jeff Atwood said today, Welcome to the Post PC Era.

It is clear that tablet computing is here to stay. Any time invested in becoming more productive on the iPad will surely pay off. Therefore I’m happy to announce that TapTyping 3.4.1 has hit the App Store adding full retina display support. I’m busy at work on some exciting features for the next version but for right now, I think I will go get some typing practice.

TapTyping Updates

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:49:00 -0500

A lot of exciting stuff has been going on with TapTyping in the past two months. The holiday tradition of being locked out of iTunes Connect for 7 days begins tomorrow so it seems like a great time to update the ol’ blog.

Three versions of TapTyping have been released in the past 6 weeks and I’m really pumped. I beleive now, more than ever, that touch screen typing is going to be an essential skill for everyone. I am now dedicating 100% of my time into making TapTyping the best virtual keyboard tutor it can be.

On November 22nd I submitted version 3.1 which added iPad typing heat maps to the lesson statistics pages. The heat maps show you exactly where on the keyboard each tap occurs and highlights erroroneous taps with red. By using the heat map the user can easily spot where their problem keys are and adjust accordingly between each page. The instant feedback you get from the heat map is a great tool for improving your typing accuracy and increasing your iPad WPM.

TapTyping 3.2, which became avaialbe on December 9th, finally brought one of the most requested features to the free version of our app: more content. A new crash course lesson was added for and all of the paid app’s content was made available via In-App-Purchasing.

And finally, TapTyping 3.3 became available yesterday adding the Inspirational Quotes lesson and fixing a few bugs introduced in version 3.2. Users of the free version can also now purchase all of the typing courses; Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced; as a single “full curriculum”.

Do you have ideas for how I can improve TapTyping? If so, I’d love to hear them. Please don’t hesitate to drop me an email or leave a comment below. Happy Holidays!

TapTyping 3.0.2 Available

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 10:19:00 -0500

TapTyping - typing trainer and TapTyping - typing test are now both updated to version 3.0.2. This was a maintenance release fixing minor issues as well as adding support for iPod touch. It took a while for 3.0.2 to get through Apple’s review process. Thanks for waiting!

We have also updated the in-app leaderboards to match our web-based typing leaderboards. This means no more duplicates from the same user: only each user’s highest score will be counted. A lot of new spots are up for grabs now so if you’re trying to rank as one of the Top 100 Fastest iOS typists you better get to work!

How fast can people really type on the iPad?

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:34:00 -0500

Answer: 111 words per minute at 100% accuracy. Or at least that’s the current record. To get into the top ten you would have to beat 83 WPM. All pretty amazing considering this is done on the glass screen of a device that is “meant only for consumption”.

With the recent release of our iPhone typing trainer we thought it was finally time to bring our TapTyping leaderboards to the web. These are updated live and only list each user’s highest score hiding the rest of their attempts (which is a change we will be rolling out to the in-app leaderboards in the next few days).

Head over to our iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch typing test leader boards to see what types of speeds the world’s fastest iOS typists are putting up.

TapTyping trainer for iPhone and iPod Touch

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 18:06:00 -0500

TapTyping 3.0 has hit the App Store and with it comes a huge surprise: full iPhone and iPod Touch support!

We decided to release this as a universal binary to say thanks to all of our existing customers. What this means for you is that if you already have our iPad typing trainer you get our iPhone and iPod touch version completely free.

Along with universal binary support we have added fast app switching and vastly improved scrolling and page switching performance. Oh, and we squashed a bunch of annoying bugs in the process.

The new version is available for download immediately. Download our universal iOS typing trainer now!

TapTyping 2.0.1 and TapTyping- typing speed test

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:41:00 -0400

A bit of a retroactive post here, but we have released TapTyping 2.0.1 as well as a free app designed to test your typing speed.

Both of these apps now feature an online leaderboard to test your skills against the rest of the world along with tons of brand new and re-worked content.

In Typing 2.0.1, make sure you check out the new Punctuation lesson. It is filled with invaluable iPad keyboard shortcuts.

In the typing test we have also added sample course material so that you can try before you buy.

TapTyping 1.0.2

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:15:00 -0400

A new update for TapTyping is now available. The changes are purely tweaks to the content. Things like fixes for typos, lesson improvements, and removal of a few awkward sentences. We also removed any words and sentences that would not be appropriate for a 1st grader. We now guarantee that TapTyping is class room ready.

When we started getting inquiries from educational institutions about our application we realized that our age rating of 13+ was throwing people off. The only reason we set the age rating so high was because of the app’s access to Twitter — but people browsing the AppStore didn’t know that. We have now reduced the age rating to reflect the nature of our application’s content.

MacWorld's Review of TapTyping

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:46:00 -0400

The word is getting out: we can help people master the iPad keyboard.

Why do we think this? David Dahlquist at MacWorld has posted an excellent review of TapTyping.

Think it’s impossible to type at a reasonable speed on a touch screen keyboard? The folks at Flairify certainly don’t. Their app, TapTyping, is an iPad typing trainer that guarantees it will make you a faster, more accurate iPad typist. Offering focused lessons to improve typing speed and accuracy as well as beginner to advanced courses and metrics to track performance, TapTyping could be the first step on your way to becoming a touch-typing virtuoso.

It seems David has described TapTyping better than we have ever been able to. It may be time to update our copy material!

jkOnTheRun reviews TapTyping

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:46:00 -0400

James Kendrick with jkOnTheRun surprised us with a review of TapTyping. A choice snippet:

I have only spent a short time with TapTyping but find my skill is already improving. I intend to go through the whole program and see how fast I can get using the on-screen keys.

James writes a ton about mobile technology and really knows his stuff. For this reason we are ecstatic to have him working through our training course. We can’t wait to hear how much faster he gets!

How to Type (81 WPM) on the iPad

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:03:00 -0400

Many reviewers use a hunt-and-peck typing style and then complain that the iPad virtual keyboard is slow and awkward. Gee… I wonder why?

We made this quick 4 minute video to show people the proper way to type on the iPad.

Janie gets up to 81 words per minute in this video. If you can beat her send us a video to claim the high score.

TapTyping coverage

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:50:00 -0400

A couple of sites have surprised us with unexpected coverage.

A huge thanks to Amit Bhawani and ShortFormBlog for featuring us and getting the word out about how we can enhance the iPad experience.

ShortFormBlog features TapTyping

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:47:00 -0400

They may have kept it… short, but it’s great to see that people are beginning to notice TapTyping! http://shortformblog.com/tech/want-to-become-a-better-ipad-touch-typist-use-t…

Oliver @ Dr. Touch shares our story

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 22:25:00 -0400

Olver Drobnik, a.k.a. Dr. Touch, has shared our project with his readers. It’s a pretty good read so I won’t spoil it.

Check it out.

Chris Pirillo covers TapTyping

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 11:41:00 -0400

The first review of TapTyping has been published.

He like-ee.

Check out Chris’ post here and then go get TapTyping!

Ihnatko on the iPad Keyboard: Apple did a fantastic job

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:57:00 -0400

Andy Ihnatko’s review of the iPad is now up on the SunTimes.com website. It sounds like the iPad really clicked for him. From the way he describes it I don’t think he could ever go without his iPad after using it for just one week.

Andy gave the virtual keyboard some great compliments as well:

Apple did a fantastic job with the iPad’s virtual keyboard. It rolls into view when needed. My expectations were set pretty low; I anticipated that it’d be handy for typing in URLs at minimum and short emails at best. But gorblimey: I can actually touch-type at a respectable clip on it. The keyboard is larger than most physical netbook keyboards and auto-correct will fix most of the clumsiness that comes from not being able to feel what you’re typing.

It’s a big deal to know that you can really write and work with this thing even when you only intended to just enjoy your coffee and read. I can, and have, written thousand-word articles with the virtual keyboard.

Full article here.

TapTyping preview video

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:49:00 -0400

I’ve created a preview video of TapTyping to give everyone an idea of what our curriculum is like:

This is my first time creating a video preview and I’m realizing that it might be time for a new laptop. About a minute or two into the video my MacBook Pro sounded like it was getting ready to launch into space.

Is there anything I didn’t cover in the video that you would like to know?

Flairify website now up

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:51:00 -0400

Our website has been deployed at www.flairify.com.

Thanks to our friend Charles Lam (@cheez80) for his help with the design.

Let us know what you think. If you don’t like it, Charles has some ‘splainin to do…

PCMag Gets Real Work Done on the iPad

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:00:00 -0400

Tim Gideon at PC Magazine published an extensive review of the iPad yesterday. His take on the virtual keyboard? The fact that he wrote the entire review on the iPad itself is a good sign:

As someone who’s all thumbs when it comes to iPhone’s tiny on-screen keyboard, I wondered if the iPad’s larger keyboard would help me master this touch screen typing thing. In a word: Yes. I’m writing this review on the iPad’s horizontal keyboard, in which the keys are large and nicely spaced. (The vertical keyboard is a little tighter, but still definitely useable.) If it weren’t comfortable, I would have abandoned the iPad for my laptop 1,000 words ago.

One tidbit that we found interesting:

Apple anticipates more than 1,000 iPad apps in addition to the over 150,000 currently available for the iPhone and iPod touch

The conclusion?

These [camera, flash, multitasking] are all valid complaints, but one thing I can say about most Apple products, and certainly the iPad: There may be things it doesn’t do, but what it does do, it does remarkably well. Aside from the aforementioned limitations, there isn’t a lot else to gripe about. And to my great surprise, you can actually get real work done with the iPad.

Full review here.