Thanks for making 2009 another great year on TypeRacer!  Last year we launched some groundbreaking features such as typing in 50 other languages and many more great things are coming in 2010.

To kick off the new year, I’d like to first unveil the I TYPERACER T-shirt designed by Alex Foygel (you can see more of his designs on his blog). It’s available for purchase from the new TypeRacer T-shirt shop.  Order yours today!

Now let’s take a look back at 2009.  Last year, you’ve helped us reach the milestone of 10 million races, hopefully improving your typing speed as a result!  We’ve carefully analyzed the data for 2009 and can help you predict how much you can expect to improve in 2010.  Here is a chart that plots the average change in typing speed of a user by number of races finished last year.*

The above chart plots just the averages, so your “mileage may vary,” but we can tell you that 1913 people increased their speed by more than 10 wpm after only 100 races.  There were also a few individuals who showed outstanding achievement, improving by more that 30 wpm throughout the year!   Let’s meet the top 10 most improved typists of the year:

Congratulations are in order to Luís for topping the list with a 50 wpm improvement!  (We’ll send him a free T-shirt).

Now we want to hear your thoughts.  What new features are you hoping to see on TypeRacer in the coming year?

* we measured “improvement” as the difference between the average of one’s races numbered 10 through 20 and their last 10 races.

Typing in other languages has been the #1 most requested feature since way back when TypeRacer was born.  Today we’re launching the first international release of TypeRacer with support for 51 languages!

Click on the change your language link at the bottom of the homepage to see the full selection.  The name and flag of the language you’ve selected will appear under the logo in the upper left corner.  Your race results and typing speed will be saved separately for each, so it’s easy to track your progress in any language.

The scorecard now displays the country where each racer is located.

TypeRacer has always appealed to an international audience, and I’m happy to give you all the ability to race in your language.  Even if English is your primary language, it’s fun to learn how to type in other languages.  So far, I’ve mastered Spanish and French, and struggling with Russian, as you can see in the screenshot above.

Typing speed, by default, is measured in words per minute for English and in characters per minute for other languages, but you can always chose the format that's best for you. Just click on the CPM (or WPM) link at the top of the homepage to save your preference.

This release represents a giant leap into the future for TypeRacer, but it isn’t perferct.  For one thing, the text translations need more work.  We used Google Translate on the English texts and the results, at best, are easy to type but don’t make much sense.  In the worst case, some of the translations might contain left-over English characters and punctuation, requiring a brief switch of keyboard layouts to type them.  We’ve tried to correct all the texts to the best of our ability, but with all these languages, we now have 23000 texts to keep track of!  Let us know if you see any errors in your language and we’ll try to fix them right away.

TypeRacer International is still a work in progress.  Over the coming months, we’ll work on improving the text quality and also translating the menus and captions.  But the main thing right now is to get more people typing in other languages, so that you’re not just racing against bots.  We need your help to spread the word.  Send out the URL for the homepage in your language to all your friends or go head-to-head with them in a private racetrack for your language of choice.  We have empty high scores to fill in every language, so start racing!

Typing in other languages has been the #1 most requested feature since TypeRacer was born back in March, 2008.  Today we’re launching the first international release of TypeRacer with support for 51 languages!

Click on the change your language link at the bottom of the homepage to see the full selection.  The name of the language you’ve selected will appear under the logo in the upper left corner.  Your race results and typing speed will be saved separately for each, so it’s easy to track your progress in any language.

The scorecard now displays the country where each racer is located.

TypeRacer has always appealed to an international audience, and I’m happy to give you all a chance to race in your language.  Even if English is your primary language, it’s fun to learn how to type in other languages.  So far, I’ve mastered Spanish and French, and struggling with Russian, as you can see in the screenshot above.

This release isn’t perfect.  For one thing, the text translations need more work.  We used Google Translate on the English texts and the results at best are easy to type but don’t make much sense.  In the worst case, some of the translations might contain left-over English characters and punctuation, requiring a brief  switch of keyboard layouts to type them (let us know if you see any such places in your language). This is all still a work in progress.  Over the coming months, we’ll work on improving the translations and also translating the menus and captions into every language.  For now, everything but the typing texts is still in English.

The main thing right now, though, is to get more people typing in other languages, so you’re not just racing against bots.  We need your help to spread the word.  Send out the URL for the homepages in your language to all your friends.  Go head-to-head with them in a private racetrack for your language.  We have empty high scores to fill in every language, so start racing!

Typing speed is usually measured in words per minute (WPM) for English and in characters per minute (CPM) for other languages, but you can always chose the format that's best for you. Just click on the CPM (or WPM) link at the top of the homepage.

I’m happy to say we have just completed the second TypeRacer release of the summer!   The first thing you’ll notice is that scorecards can now be pinned and dragged around on the screen so you can compare people’s stats.  Just click (or right-click) on any username to bring up the options menu and select “Pin scorecard.”  Once pinned, you’ll be able to move this user’s scorecard around by dragging its upper left corner.   You can “un-pin” the scorecard by clicking on the pin or just closing it.  For now, the scorecard shows you the user’s stats and links to their Facebook or Myspace profiles (pinning will come in handy if you want to click on those links).  When we introduce extended user profiles and pictures, you’ll be able to see them here as well.

The most significant new feature, though, is the ability to report a user.  If you see someone with an offensive username or someone you suspect is cheating, please report them using the same menu (click on the username then select “Report user” next to the red flag).  Your participation in this will greatly speed up the process of removing Terms of Service violators from the site.

We’ve also added a lot of new texts to type and made a bunch of minor improvements to the site.  Many of the new text were submitted by you guys – thanks!   The others were contributed by our friends at Bookfail.com (hope you can handle racing and laughing at the same time!)