I have noticed a lot of video games about poker like the NBC heads-up game, and also programs like poker academy and such.
Are these programs good to improve poker? Will I be able to play better using these programs or should I just play real humans online?
play humans.
My only experience is this;The Itbox game machine at my local pub has a HU game you can play to win money, like £1 for every opponent you knock out. you could not learn HU play from it cos the opponents are so godamn bad, for a start they can't put you on a range can they? 
Edit; i guess it would be possible to program a bot to be good at poker, playing a tight to begin with and then adjusting range and play to your vpip and pfr over time etc. Then if you add the whole ICM calculations on top you could probably get a bot that is better than many humans at sng's if you could get it to read flops somehow to determine how strong its hand and if it can continue to SD.
How hard would that be though? 
Try playing governor of poker, its a pretty good game with good AI, the final citys are actually very hard.
Am I allowed to post links?
http://www.miniclip.com/games/governor-of-poker/en/
