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Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

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

#211

I'm impressed. I often get my Mac to read things to me as I find it difficult to follow text. This was great.

I'm a big, no HUGE, fan of the Mac Text to speech thing. It's great for proofreading text, and reading non-code text. @achalkley what speed do you use? This is where I have mine: http://i.imgur.com/nIO0gRw.png It's a little quick, but it keeps thing interesting ;)

@ivan_ah Yep I totally use it for proofreading. Often I find mistakes in news articles and such and end up being that person notifying them of a mistake :)

Mine is a little slower than yours - http://i.imgur.com/WGW1QWk.png - I use cmd + alt + shift + s as my short cut.

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

#212
post #191
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…

http://jsfiddle.net/vKZLn/1/ Fun to make. I'm also curious about the overall benefits. I find myself distracted by other thoughts if I don't have subvocalization happening. If you want the ability to move backwards, I feel like that's possible with a good NLP library. If you skip back two sentences, or enough sentences to match some word or syllable threshold, it may be useful. In that case, you can play a few words,…

Hey Just2n,

Thanks for the JS Fiddle. It was the basis for my chrome extension, which your fiddle greatly expedited.

The following Chrome extension allows a single-word-reader (or whatever they are called?) to pop up and run for any text you select in your browser.

https://github.com/keithmgould/speedreader-chrome-extension

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

#213
post #88

The reading experience would have been even better in other languages if the translations weren't so bad. Not sure if it is the right place to put it, but here is a much better French translation for the demo: Bienvenue dans votre premier Spritz ! On commence par 250 mots par minute, un peu plus que la vitesse moyenne de lecture qui est de 210 mots par minute. Pas d'inquiétude, nous irons plus vite dans un instant. E…

So true, the original French version was terrible. Impossible to understand, even for a native.

Thanks for the better translation.

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

#214
post #191
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…

http://jsfiddle.net/vKZLn/1/ Fun to make. I'm also curious about the overall benefits. I find myself distracted by other thoughts if I don't have subvocalization happening. If you want the ability to move backwards, I feel like that's possible with a good NLP library. If you skip back two sentences, or enough sentences to match some word or syllable threshold, it may be useful. In that case, you can play a few words,…

Sweet fiddle, but putting the emphasis on the center letter puts it way too far to the right for any long word. Compared to the example on the Spritz website it's quite awkward. My eye constantly wants to shift left, while I can comfortably zone out on the highlighted letter in the Spritz example.

I'm curious as to how they calculate the "Optimal Recognition Position", but there is probably a better way to approximate it. I'm going to play around with some different positions.

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

#215
Funnily enough, last week I released an Android app that does a similar (although not quite as cool) thing:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hughesoft....

The main motivation was to be able to get through light content more quickly, but I've noticed my general reading speed has increased too. For a lot of content I'm pretty comfortable at 500wpm using the app.

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