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Bringing Speed Reading To the Web
vencs writes "With the latest cycle of speed reading fad catching on all over, there bloomed a rather neat technique called Spritzing (an online implementation of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation). Even before the company released its SDK, many clones popped up, offering bookmarklets that do the same task. It's a cool (though situational) tool for going through text articles quickly (400-600 wpm)."
Speed reading seems like a solution in search of a problem to me.
I'll just be happy if this trend towards low-information-density videos without transcription stops. It's such a colossal waste of everyone's time and bandwidth to have to watch a 45m video of two blowhards talking about something when I could get the same effect from 5 minutes of reading and looking at a couple of graphs or 20-second video demos.
... but you have to really concentrate or you'll lose the train of the sentence. Can't go back and read something over (well, nowhere near as easily). Not suited, then, to casual reading.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
This thing is seizure inducing! I couldn't get past two sentences. There is something extremely unnatural about having your eyes totally fixated on just one spot in the screen while words flash by at hyperspeed.
Great until you come along a long word or a word you don't know. Try 400 wpm when Tralfamadorian Brokinovski or Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis shows up.
TL;DR.
I often catch myself at reading too fast. Then I have to go back because I missed something. I do remember a time when I found it frustrating that I couldn't read as fast as process what I had read. But that was when I was five years old. Reading speed came quickly with practice. I don't think you need a special technique, except mindfulness. Don't skip through texts unless you're looking for something specific. Remember to pause and think.
I don't get it. I viewed their Spritzs web site at 600wpm and it was still slower than just reading the text on the web site, without the added advantage that I could stop at any time and instantly step back to where I wanted. Are people really that slow at reading? Perhaps the real solution is for people to stop watching so much (crap) TV and read a few more goddam books now and again.
I listen at over 600 wpm, and my blind friend is over 1,000. I never enjoyed so many books before. Here's a link to my geek stuff page, one of which is my Sonic speedup program.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Words that are gendered or elicit emotional basis take a period of time longer for the brain to link to the previous word. Comprehension tests show that for some material this works, but for works of fiction or stories this technology needs tweaking. There are lists out there, but even those need to be weighed to the individual. Unless there is a setup to gauge comprehension from a known text that is tested, many will not get any benefit of long term memory storage.
Dictionary of white listed words 6th grade reading level (to be displayed at max speed, the rest at a settable sub-speed)
Long words broken up by syllable
Dead-man switch - hold down to keep reading release to pause and display Fwd and Rew
-- "Oh. This guy again."
Then why do they still have so much text on their website that does not use their speed reading tool?
Takes longer to consume a page, since normally you don't read each and every word, you glance across a page picking up critical words to glean the meaning.
Running it on their webpage, I got bored waiting for it, meanwhile in less time previously, I'd digested the entire page.
That being said, I passed the link on to a dyslexic friend, we'll see how she feels, presuming she can successfully read my G+ post to her. ;-)
I've been using this speech synthesis program for speed reading for a while now: http://zabaware.com/reader/ It does the same thing where you keep your eyes focused in one place and words change but it also reads them outloud with speech synthesis. Its a bit strange at first to listen to speech that fast but I find that reading visually plus hearing it audibly helps focus attention while speed reading.
What really ticks me off is when the ads work but the damn main video is "broken and unavailable".
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
While it is very fun, reading 700 wpm with it is rather reminiscent of a roller-coaster ride, it does have its areas of weakness.
Obviously, you cannot use it for reading complex, information filled articles. Even set at an extremely slow setting it simply would not work.
It would also be horrible for pleasure reading, novels, short stories, and the like.
It is a great tool for reading empty, information and emotion devoid, text though.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The Spritz website says "retention levels when spritzing are at least as good as with traditional reading" but I really want to see some independent testing to verify this claim.
If someone uses this to read a short story (~5,000 words, narrative fiction), how much detail do readers still have after one hour? or the next day? What about a technical document, like a whitepaper in the reader's interest, or an End-User License Agreement? If we tested this on psych students (as we usually do with test like this in university), an put a zinger in the EULA like "if you put your family name twice when signing the form to get a free drink," I'd like to know how many students would catch it.