I like it. There seems to be a lot of negativity here but I think it could have a lot of value, especially if you needed to wade through large volumes of text.
Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#22Check out the Wikipedia article on speed reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading Even if rapid serial visual presentation improves reading speed (which is dubious), it has enough negative aspects to counteract any benefits. For example, going back or doing any controlled skimming is difficult. You also lose all the contextual and landmark cues of page layout.
I recommend How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. Everyone laughs when I recommend a book about how to read a book, but it definitely helped me a lot.
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#23In the late 90s, there was a company called 'Cornix' pushing this technique. More recently, a research project called 'BuddyBuzz' out of Stanford was pushing it for reading on cellphones.
Reading for cellphones would _really_ be something.
Also, it might be better in cases where you want to be sure you read the whole text, rather then skimming, maybe learning? (obviously not always).
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#24Check out the Wikipedia article on speed reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading Even if rapid serial visual presentation improves reading speed (which is dubious), it has enough negative aspects to counteract any benefits. For example, going back or doing any controlled skimming is difficult. You also lose all the contextual and landmark cues of page layout.
I took a speed reading course long time ago and even though they had some interesting points about how to read, it was mostly filled with complete bullshit. Comprehension always trumps speed. I'm always surprised by people who say "I've read that book in an hour" or something like that. When I read, I get hundreds of ideas and have hundreds of questions in my head and I usually either write them down or look up the r…
"When I read, I get hundreds of ideas and have hundreds of questions in my head and I usually either write them down or look up the references on the web. That takes time."
I have a pretty good method down now that might work for others. Whenever I'm reading a (non-fiction) book I put a dash in the margin next to any important point. I usually have two or three marks per page. Then after I'm done reading I go back and retype the sentences I marked into a MindMap. That way I can read the book at a reasonable speed since I'm not making marginalia, and after I'm done with the book it takes maybe three or four hours to transcribe into the MindMap.
Typing out the full text of the interesting parts of the books is relatively fast since I am a fast typist, only slightly longer than condensing it down into quick notes.
The MindMap itself has a few advantages. First, the hierarchical nature of the software provides built in context and allows me to mentally switch gears between the different layers of the argument very fast. Because of this I often am able to create new ideas that I wouldn't have been able to have otherwise. It also makes it very easy for me to incorporate the important parts of the book into other projects later. If someone says something that reminds me of a book on news.yc, I can find the relevant quote and have it cut-and-pasted into the comment field in less than a minute.
Also, because I organize all my startup ideas and other projects in MindMaps, I can easily drag and drop an entire book directly into that project if it is relevant. Then if I'm talking to someone about the project and they ask me a question, I can look up the answer almost instantly if I don't already know it offhand.
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#25I found myself reading faster without this. It doesn't account for variations in how quickly I can recognize a word, or whether I had to think about what was just said. It just blats out the words in a monotone emphasis, demands complete attention (someone calls your name, and you turn around? gotta start over, or at least spend plenty of time seeking) and fails with images. I just tested my reading with both this an…
One important problem with spreeder is that when you read normally, your eye jumps much in the same way as it does when using spreeder, but it captures 2-3 words at a time, not 1 word at a time.
So with spreeder, your speed is actually divided by 2-3, you lose the context, the ability to pause and think, the images, the ability to skim, etc...
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#26I think this might be a useful application for mobile devices. Maybe a sort of newsreader that would pre-load the day's headlines and let you read them this way on the subway...
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#27Just thought I'd weigh in since I'm the author of the app. I was pleasantly surprised to see my little pet project from a couple years ago make it onto hacker news, since this is the first site I go to to read my daily news.
Anyway, the intended purpose for spreeder is not to supplement your reading (I personally don't use it for that purpose), but rather as a training tool. The one (and probably only) thing I got out of any speed reading training course was that there's a lot of redundancy when reading texts.
People "read" text in their head (subvocalize), which slows down reading (vs just seeing + understanding it). Also, most people tend to reread a lot as well since they're not focusing.
Spreeder is meant to be a trainer of sorts. When words are flashing at a high speed in front of you, you're forced to focus more on what's going on, and you don't get a chance to reread things you missed. So you're naturally inclined to pay more attention. When I want to train, I read at a speed where I can barely keep up - it helps eliminate me naturally trying to subvocalize the words in my mind.
In the end state, I've found it's helped me in my normal reading. I don't actually use spreeder to read my daily dose of internet stuff, but I spend less time in the unfocused state so I get more out of it.
Just my two cents.
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#28Just thought I'd weigh in since I'm the author of the app. I was pleasantly surprised to see my little pet project from a couple years ago make it onto hacker news, since this is the first site I go to to read my daily news. Anyway, the intended purpose for spreeder is not to supplement your reading (I personally don't use it for that purpose), but rather as a training tool. The one (and probably only) thing I got ou…
If you feel like improving it:
I have trouble reading long words with spreeder (for example when reading German texts). Maybe you could make the tool pause a bit longer for words above a certain threshold.
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#29Just thought I'd weigh in since I'm the author of the app. I was pleasantly surprised to see my little pet project from a couple years ago make it onto hacker news, since this is the first site I go to to read my daily news. Anyway, the intended purpose for spreeder is not to supplement your reading (I personally don't use it for that purpose), but rather as a training tool. The one (and probably only) thing I got ou…
If you feel like improving it: I have trouble reading long words with spreeder (for example when reading German texts). Maybe you could make the tool pause a bit longer for words above a certain threshold.
That's already an option. Look for "speed variability" in the advanced settings.
Re: Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
#30Check out the Wikipedia article on speed reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading Even if rapid serial visual presentation improves reading speed (which is dubious), it has enough negative aspects to counteract any benefits. For example, going back or doing any controlled skimming is difficult. You also lose all the contextual and landmark cues of page layout.
Indeed, page architecture is very important in helping readers parse and comprehend the information on a page -- especially on the Web. As Jakob Neilsen's eye tracking studies have shown, most people don't read the text on a Web page linearly, they scan it in an F pattern ( http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html ). Good info architects design pages to convey the most important information in these spaces…
Ask and you shall receive:
http://liveink.com/demo_samples.php
And the slashdot about it: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/148220