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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

#81

Post by Pitarou »

mynameisfiber wrote: post #3

Looks like the same technology as spreeder ( http://www.spreeder.com/app.php )... what's the difference between the two? As someone who tried using spreeder for a while, I can say that your retention is quite a bit lower than normal reading, especially when reading complicated texts, since you loose contextual clues (your brain is really good at doing look-aheads for clues).

It's a refinement of the idea.

If you use Spreeder, your eye still needs to move sometimes. That slows you down. Spritz has been carefully designed to ensure that your eye never needs to move, and never wants to move.

In my informal comparison tests, these improvements do make a difference.

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

#82

Post by _kfb »

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 unblock my vision, though obviously at the cost of some words per minute.

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

#83

Post by MarkTee »

xenophanes wrote: post #19

FAQ says: > Next, let’s talk about subvocalization. This is the process whereby, whenever you read, you talk to yourself, repeating every word in your head. The issue here is that most people can only speak at about 180wpm, maximum. Increasing speed beyond that means not saying every word to yourself. This makes no sense to me. I've read at 600 wpm while sub-vocalizing every word. That's much much faster sub-vocalizi…

How did you test this?

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

#84

Post by spark3k »

I think this is awesome and would benefit from a few extra options:

• Up to 5 words in a flash. (Still centered using their technique) Because true speed reading doesn't take in each individual word, rather groups of words at each eye saccade stop.

• Pause / fine rate control.

• Image placeholder indication & image pause.

• Fine and course scrubbing revealing the position in a traditional section of text.

• Chapter / break markers

• User settings profiles.

• Bonus: blink / look-away detection.

I think it has massive potential!

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

#85

Post by dangrossman »

philbarr wrote: post #80
axman6 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations on being one of the millions of internet users who have no idea how the patent system works. First to file is purely for determining priority of an application; the date at which the patent office (or another patent office under the Paris convention) comes to know about the invention. It's used to resolve a) which prior art is relevant (anything published publicly before this date) and b) if two peopl…

I've read your comment twice, and it seems to me that it actually validates the "first to file, biatch" comment..? According to (a) if someone files a patent first then if there is any prior art that and any subsequent patent applications will fail. According to (b) if someone files a patent first then out of that and any later patent applications the first one will win. Seems to fit with "first to file" to me.

The "invention" has been made public (in paulftw's dated comment) before anyone has filed for a patent. It's no longer patentable material in a first-to-file system as there's now evidence that it's obvious to practitioners of the field, and this evidence predates any filing gcb0 can make. In first-to-invent, he could've claimed an invention date prior to the comment. Sound right?

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

#86

Post by a3_nm »

There is a "The Science" section, referring to the Blog referring back to the same section, but I see nothing scientific about it.

Science does not work by giving loads of examples of why the approach "should" work better than traditional reading, substantiated by intuition and "80%"-"20%" figures given with no reliable source. It should instead be validated by experiments.

Here, it is simple enough to validate the approach experimentally: select texts and create simple multiple choice assignments to evaluate reading comprehension, and compare the performance of your method versus traditional reading on random people. The exact protocol would require a bit of care to avoid biases, but it wouldn't be that hard to do.

Without a study of this kind, this is just a gimmicky way to read, backed by some people's belief that it is more efficient.

(Another comment: the example French text looks like machine translation, which makes it hard to understand.)

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

#87

Post by 8note »

I'd like to see this combined with a regular paragraph for reading.

Say it sits on the right, and you have text on the left. While skimming, if I spot something i want to read more in depth, I click on it, and the spritz starts. Then I start speed reading through on the spritz, and if I get stuck on something, I click again and the spritz pauses and highlights the current word or sentence. That way, I can quickly figure out where to read next. Then when I'm done, I click again and it continues to the end of the paragraph.

That said, reading the faq was rather tiring as it is. I was trying really hard to avoid reading, which my eyes were unhappy about.

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

#88

Post by jpatte »

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. En fait, nombreux sont ceux qui lisent déjà des Spritz à plus de 1.000 mpm. A cette vitesse on peut lire un roman de 1000 pages en seulement 10 heures. Que se passerait-il si votre vitesse de lecture pouvait doubler, sans diminuer pour autant votre compréhension ? Et si elle pouvait tripler ? Notre but est de répandre les Spritz à travers le monde et que 15% du contenu littéraire mondial puisse être lu via notre méthode d'ici 2016. Sélectionnez une nouvelle vitesse sur la droite quand vous êtes prêt ou cliquez sur un des drapeaux ci-dessous pour essayer Spritz dans une autre langue.

Prochain arrêt, 300 mots par minute ! A cette vitesse vous lisez environ 25% plus vite que la plupart des lecteurs chevronnés. Un autre effet positif des Spritz est qu'au-delà de 400 mpm votre compréhension se met à augmenter en même temps que la vitesse après seulement quelques sessions de lecture. De plus, comme dans un Spritz vos yeux ne se déplacent pas d'un mot à l'autre ni même d'une phrase à l'autre, vous pouvez lire pendant de longues périodes sans les fatiguer. Cliquez sur le menu déroulant pour essayer une autre vitesse.

Voilà déjà de vrais progrès ! Votre vitesse actuelle est de 350 mpm. A cette vitesse vous lisez 40% plus vite que la majorité des gens. Vous n'avez pas besoin de cours de speed­reading ou d'exercices supplémentaires avec Spritz. Nous développons sans cesse de nouveaux logiciels pour que vous puissiez lire globalement n'importe quel texte avec Spritz. Nous offrons également aux autres développeurs la possibilité d'intégrer Spritz dans leurs applications. Spritz est de loin la meilleure façon de lire les livres électroniques, emails, sites d'actualité et autres sites web.

Vous avez maintenant atteint 400 mots par minute. Prenons un instant pour discuter de ce que vous venez d'accomplir. Après seulement quelques minutes, vous pouvez maintenant lire des Spritz au moins 60% plus vite qu'avant. Réfléchissez à la manière dont vous lisez d'habitude sur votre portable. Grâce à Spritz, plus besoin de faire constamment défiler les textes tout en lisant ni de pincer ou tapoter votre écran pour redimensionner le contenu affiché. Les éditeurs peuvent présenter leur contenu sous une forme compacte qui pourra être lue confortablement sur un téléphone ou une tablette. Spritz prouve à quel point les appareils actuels paraissent larges et massifs : vous n'avez pas besoin de tout cet espace pour lire du contenu !

Impressionnant! 500 mots par minute après moins de dix minutes. Si c'est encore trop rapide, redescendez simplement à 400 mots par minute pour votre prochain essai. Vous découvrirez que plus vous êtes détendu, plus vite vous pouvez lire et meilleure sera votre compréhension du texte. Nos études ont même montré que l'utilisation régulière de Spritz permet d'augmenter durablement sa vitesse de lecture et son niveau de compréhension, et ce quel que soit le support ! Nous croyons sincèrement que Spritz va changer le monde et nous vous remercions d'avoir pris le temps de l'essayer. Vous pouvez nous soutenir en nous "likant" sur Facebook, en nous suivant sur Twitter et en parlant de nous autour de vous !

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

#89

Post by Mizza »

Wow, I was instantly sold. Please create an eBook reader for Android which uses this immediately, I love it!

I hacked together a crude JavaScript implementation in a few minutes just for kicks:

https://github.com/Miserlou/OpenSpritz

..hopefully we'll see more of this stuff everywhere.

Good work, please thrive!

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

#90

Post by zhaphod »

Kiro wrote: post #65
zhaphod wrote: post #48

It may be sour grapes, but why should any one read at such high speeds. What is the virtue of reading at 500 wpm. I don't think that the time saved is such a big deal unless one is reading 40 - 50 books a year or reading 300+ technical papers a year. And comprehension suffers at high speed. I do just fine reading at 250 wpm. Some times I feel just being good enough has lost its value.

What is the virtue of reading at 250 wpm? I do just fine reading at 1 wpm. Some times I feel just being good enough has lost its value.

If you had said you do just fine at 150 wpm may be i can accept it. But you are saying 1 wpm which means you are not trying to give constructive criticism. Most of the gen-pop is around 200-250 wpm which is why I said it is good enough. Don't be a troll.
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