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!

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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. 

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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.

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http://shortformblog.com/tech/want-to-become-a-better-ipad-touch-typist-use-t...

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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.

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The first review of TapTyping has been published.

He like-ee.

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

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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.

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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?

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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...

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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.

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We got our approval email last night onlt 4 hours after submitting. I've never seen an Apple approval come so quickly... but I suppose these are special circumstances, aren't they?

Wish us luck as we hit stores on April 3rd!

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I found email easy and productive to use, and had no trouble typing accurately and quickly on the iPad’s wide on-screen keyboard. In fact, I found the iPad virtual keyboard more comfortable and accurate to use than the cramped keyboards and touchpads on many netbooks, though some fast touch typists might disagree. Apple’s $39 iPad case, which bends to set up a nice angle for typing, helps.

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We cut this one a little close: final submissions are due in just over an hour. Mark and I were busy adding some important finishing touches last night:

• Lesson progress indicators
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (chapters 1 & 2)
• Bug fixes in the type Twitter feed (phew!)

Hopefully you'll be able to download TapTyping on Saturday. We can hardly wait!

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