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Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

spritzinc.com

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Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#161

Post by DonGateley »

_kfb wrote: post #82

Impressive, and interesting, but with one problem: I, like a lot of people, have floaters in my eyes ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floaters ). When I focus on a single point and don't move my eyes around, they tend to congregate at the centre of my vision and in Spritz's case block the words that are being shown. Potentially, a brief pause every 50 words or so would make sense in order to quickly move my eyes and un…

Having had detached retinas that were caught early and tacked back in place by a laser I too have a heavy dose of floaters from blood leaking and clotting. It's more like drifting and jerking, variably transparent clouds than what people usually think of with point or wiggler floaters. What annoys me the most with this problem is their motion into and out of my foveal region in response to eyeball rotations and the resulting variation of tranparency. This especially bugs me while reading. Well, driving is worse but that's another topic.

What I immediately noticed with the Spritz demo was that since I wasn't moving my eyes there was no particular change in transparency in the foveal region once the little beasts settled into place. I found this a much improved situation which indicates that it is not the partial occlusion itself that bothers me but rather the constant changes in it due to moving my eyes about the page.

In brief, I like what this method does for my problem.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#162

Post by shawn-furyan »

grogenaut wrote: post #156
shawn-furyan wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never been able to get the hang of speed reading (I think I lack the knack for skimming), but I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and have a similar procedure for dense sections. Even when I'm distracted and prone to zoning out, I always get essentially 100% comprehension because I just rewind back to the last part that I remember well. In fact, it seems I still pick up something when I'm zoned out, because I'll re…

So another thing to note is sometimes what you are zoning out on isn't important so if you still get what's going on don't skip back. You can do the same thing going forward in a binary search type pattern. Works really well for stuff like Tolkien or Mellville whe're they're off on a tangent describing the sea or the somthings of somewhere and how onrey they are.

That's something I don't have the mindset to do. I would sooner drop a book completely than just skip whole passages.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#163

Post by danneu »

xmonkee wrote: post #37
danneu wrote: post #33

I tried to make something similar while learning Javascript (ClojureScript). http://jsfiddle.net/P7c3s/

Care to share the cljs source?

It was my first attempt at writing a client-side Javascript app: https://github.com/danneu/speed-reader/blob/master/src/cljs/...

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#165

Post by Eleutheria »

I like the idea.

But I believe, and that's my very own personal opinion, that showing short sentences instead of words helps much more to understand the content of the reading instead of trying to glue together meaningless words one by one, attaching the new isolated word to the previous and next word imposes a heavy burden in your brain.

Here is an example of what I mean:

* words in braces are red *

    Our [goal] here at Spritz
    is to [share] 
    our [spritzing] technologies
    with the [world]. 
    To [do] that, 
    we [created] 
    the [PoweredbySpritz™] program 
    that [facilitates] 
    the [development] 
    of [applications] 
    using [Spritz] technologies. 
    An entire host of [tools] 
    have been [created], 
    including [SDKs] and [APIs] 
    for [Android], [iOS], 
    and [Javascript] 
    to help [developers] 
    implement [spritzing] 
    [inside] of their 
    [applications] and [websites].
The eye follows the red word which has a heavier importance in the sentence, so prepositions and articles are not ignored but appended to the cognitive path.

* Btw, I don't believe in patents, so even if I build on your idea, I could care less about patenting it. So fuck spritz. If anybody wants to develop it further more, go ahead, step on my shoulders, as I've stepped on giants before me too.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#166

Post by tels »

I think is this a neat concept. Unfortunately it'll probably lead to unskippable, unblockable advertisements that you won't realize you've read until its too late.

But you can develop a lot of cool lightweight tools since it's something you could implement fairly easily on your own if the API becomes tainted.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#168

Post by mncolinlee »

Fishkins wrote: post #145
lukev wrote: post #40

This is very interesting (and as has been pointed out in other comments, not exactly a new idea). I think its proper application, though, is in a tool for practicing reading, not for actually reading tests. One major thing this approach looses is the inherent non-linearity of text. If I miss a fact and want to back up a bit, or want to pause for a moment and think about something, I can (when reading) without even th…

> this tool is truly excellent for breaking the subvocalization habit Which, according to all the research I've seen, is exactly what you don't want to do if you want to retain any information. (I couldn't find the study I remembered reading recently, but this article references some such studies http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4229 )

This.

I was speed reading since Third Grade and remember making a deliberate effort to slow down in Junior High because I was not retaining enough information to write essays. During High School, I broke the curve on A.P. US History on an open notes final without having a single note to bring to class.

Auditory learning styles may require the subvocalization to succeed.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#169

Post by npsimons »

leephillips wrote: post #126
listic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 'think' do you mean 'comprehend the text you're reading' in this context?

Yes, where "comprehend" means to meaningfully understand and appreciate. I was trying to express the idea that if something can be comprehended, in this sense, as fast as it can be speed read, then perhaps it's not worth reading.

One of the things I picked up from "How to Read a Book" (where they put forward that speed reading is usually just bringing slow readers up to speed), is that not everything is worth reading. There is so much to read out there, that you can't possibly read it all (relevant: http://what-if.xkcd.com/76/), and you have to pick and choose. One way to weed out what is relevant is to apportion the correct amount of time and attention to each thing you read. Some things deserve none of your time and attention; others may merely require a once through skimming to get everything of value out of it. Other works you may never exhaust (HtRaB's authors posit that only great books fall into this category, by definition). Perhaps much more important than increasing the speed of reading is developing the skill to be discerning in what and how deeply different texts should be read.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#170

Post by combiner »

triangleman wrote: post #149
quarterto wrote: post #112

Wow. I found "reading" their demo a deeply unpleasant experience. It seemed to induce tunnel vision, and put a huge amount of strain on my lenses. The dark background of the page surrounding the banner didn't help, and persisted in my vision for a good 5 minutes. My eyes still hurt.

And they want 15% of the world reading like this by 2016? (Did I remember that right?)

I thought it was 15% of world's texts... apparently my comprehension is not so good with this.
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