We’ve been busy adding new features over the Christmas holidays. The first of these is already available for you to use: you can now create a practice typing session from a set of random English words:

We’ve had numerous requests from users for a feature that would generate random typing lessons based on actual words. You can now generate instant typing practices, simply by choosing the number of words you wish to type.

We’re planning to extend this feature in the future to create automatically create lessons targeting letters that you need to practice (the ones you make the most typos with).

Enjoy!

The best typing tutor on the web is now available for sale in the Chrome Web Store.

It was surprisingly easy to get into the store if you’ve got an existing webapp running:

• pay Google $5 (one-time developer fee; not per-app)

• create a 16-line JSON manifest file

• take some screen shots and create an icon (the hardest part, really)

• bundle it into a zip

• checkmark a few boxes, add some descriptive text, click “publish”

All you are really doing is bundling up some meta-data so that Chrome users can see your app as being “installed”. Even though my app is very much server-dependent, and has its own concept of user accounts and payments, Google is happy to have it in the store. And I’m happy for the potential extra customers.

It’s obvious that the Chrome Web Store is a great boon for developers. However it’s unclear whether users will actually find this useful, much less flock to it.

My guess is that once we start seeing more apps that really use HTML5 features like local storage, it might take off. I hope it does.

Patrick McKenzie, a solo entrepreneur whom I admire greatly has launched his second project: Appointment Reminder.

Appointment Reminder is a service for personal business services (think: hair salons, medical offices, law firms, or anyone that regularly schedules appointments with clients). Appointment Reminder sends out reminders to clients automatically, via phone, SMS or email. Fewer forgotten appointments = increased revenue.

He’s leveraging Twilio, and API that I’m just dying to find an excuse to use.

Congrats Patrick, and good luck!