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!)

This spring marked one year since TypeRacer went live, and what a great year it has been – almost from day one, TypeRacer has been serving more than a million races every month!  It’s been so much fun building this first-of-its-kind online experience and talking to many of you about how to make it even better.

There have been lots of challenges as well: making the site work in all kinds of browsers, across social networks, overcoming database outages, dealing with cheaters, and many, many, more. This stuff took up so much time, that I’m actually surprised we were able to get anything else done at all. In spite of all that, the past 12 months saw the release of some major features like private racetracks, permanent accounts with race histories, and recently, the Facebook App.  There is so much more still to come, and today, we’re kicking off TypeRacer’s 2^nd summer season with a brand new release!

New Features

Improved player matching: From now on players are matched up based on WPM proximity instead of skill level. This means that a 40-WPM Average player and a 42-WPM Pro can finally go up against each other in a public race. This change makes races so much more balanced and competitive, especially if you type in the 55-75 WPM range like I do and were constantly being smoked by 90-WPM people like I was!

More skill levels: The Megaracer skill level has been split into the 55-79 WPM Typemaster level and Megaracer for 80+ WPM.

Many of you, especially those who type very fast, have been asking for these two changes, and we’re happy to finally deliver on our promise!

You might be wondering why we picked 80 WPM as the cut-off for Megaracer?  That’s because it happens to be just above the top 10% line if we were to graph everyone’s scores.  So if you’re still a Megaracer — congratulations — you type faster than 90% of our community!  Which brings us to the next point:

Global ranking: So you didn’t make it to the top 20 but still want to know where you stand? Now you can, with the new percentile-based rank on your scorecard!  In this screenshot, for example, Alejandro types faster than 69.3% of the people.  (We also made it easier to see who’s a bot).

Support for New Browsers

• Internet Explorer 8
• Safari 4 Beta

Tweaks and Bug Fixes

• the race again link in single player game no longer takes you to a multiplayer game



• commas and semicolons are no longer underlined to differentiate them from periods and colons (see the screenshot)
• scorecards no longer pop up when a car enters an idle mouse pointer, so you won’t have any undesired interruptions while typing (see the screenshot)
• + many more bugs that you hopefully never noticed

Hope you enjoy these new changes! There’s more on the way!

P.S. We’re now on Twitter: follow @typeracer for news and my latest thoughts.

Guest Review, submitted by casinoguide.com

With the many games available in Web Land – first-person shooters, role-playing, online casinos, and even digitized board games – it’s always refreshing to find something new. The game-slash-speed-typing competition TypeRacer is a fun and intriguing hybrid of sorts that matches your talent as a typist against other, equally-driven typists.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Move your car from point A to point B by typing as quickly and as accurately as you can. The gauge measures words-per-minute, and in order to best the other seven drives on the dotted roadway, you must tap into your inner courthouse stenographer and bang out long and sometimes complicated sentences as they appear.

Many a-ninth grade computer class standout has tried and failed to reach the Promised Land in time. You, with your quasi-typing skills, thinking that it’s all as easy as asdf, are sorely mistaken. The game is not a promenade through an unproblematic parkway. However, not to overawe the would-be competition with unfeasibly thorny words like “quasi,” the game is fun, and opposition always separates the perspicacious and nippy from the dense and leisurely.

Of course, you might want to play some A-ball before stepping up to the plate in the majors. By using TypeRacer’s practice mode, you will get a feel – literally – for what needs to be done. Wyatt Earp gave the best advice for a game like this, although, I doubt he and Doc Holiday were spending their days on dueling typewriters. He said, “Take your time in a hurry.” And that’s as sound as it gets; for if you make a mistake, you must back up to fix it before proceeding.

You have the practice option available, as well as an option to invite your friends. (It’s always fun to invite hunt-and-peckers). Although you don’t get a prize for improving your skills, TypeRacer is an entertaining way to better an essential talent.

Some of the competition knows how to handle a keyboard, and some are just learning. But overall, TypeRacer is fun and friendly. Just hope you don’t have to go against Barbara Blackburn. Her car can fly.