Typing Karaoke teaches touch typing with top tunes

Typing Karaoke, a Flash game from developer Travis Chen, makes learning how to type fun — as long as you're familiar with a select few hit songs.

The game tests your ability to type accurately, like all typing-teaching software. But instead of typing sentences to, say, keep zombies at bay, Typing Karaoke tasks you with typing along with lines of songs you may or may not know. If you manage to keep up, you'll slowly fill in the world behind the on-screen character, and maintain a score multiplier, although failing to complete a line before the next one comes up will reset the multiplier.

Only a minute or so of each song is available, likely to get around copyright issues. Typing Karaoke currently includes an eclectic mix of eight tracks: "Skinny Love" by Bon Iver, "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, "Home" by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes, "I Won't Give Up" by Jason Mraz, "Go Do" by Jonsi, "Love Lockdown" by Kanye West, "Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO, "Creep" by Radiohead, "Rock This Town" by Stray Cats, and "OMG" by Usher.

"Typing to popular lyrics becomes a more natural way to learn typing," said Chen, "because song familiarity allows you to recall from memory instead of regurgitating a sentence on the screen."

Check out the game for yourself here. Heads-up: "Call Me Maybe" is tougher to keep up with than you might expect.