Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#2Amazing name.
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#3Isn't this just a clone of Spritz? http://www.spritzinc.com/
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#4I have tried this in the past. I dont know if it's the same product or other, but same idea. My main problems where that I want to pause, maybe google some words or terms or person, go back to previous sentence, or skip some sentences alltogether. It gave me a lot of trouble because I couldn't find the text I wanted to highlight/rightclick/google etc, so I ended up taking more time for the same text.
That being said, I do believe it has it's uses. Maybe on a mobile device, maybe for literature only.
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#5Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7385634
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#6This kind of things are gimmicky at best, and an awful reading experience at worst. The time it takes for your eyes to adjust to the blinking letters is larger than the saccadic movement, and a single saccade reads a bunch of words instead, allowing you to both comprehend the sentence immediately, and also easily skip back-forward in case of errors.
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#7Isn't this just a clone of Spritz? http://www.spritzinc.com/
isn't that yet another rsvp implementation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_serial_visual_presentatio...)?
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#8I think this kind of thing is pretty interesting... For me, the reason I can't use it for most stuff I read is that I often need more time to process/understand certain words and names. On the first article from Instapaper that I tried this on, I was fed a sentence containing the words "doxological peregrinations." That threw me off, and then I knew I would have trouble keeping up. It'd be interesting if there was some nonintrusive way to dynamically adjust the speed. I also found it confusing when first names and surnames were separated, because I tend to recognize a person's name as a whole entity. Spritz seems to use longer pauses for commas, which seems helpful. But I really miss being able to see the whole sentence I'm "reading"...
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#9This kind of things are gimmicky at best, and an awful reading experience at worst. The time it takes for your eyes to adjust to the blinking letters is larger than the saccadic movement, and a single saccade reads a bunch of words instead, allowing you to both comprehend the sentence immediately, and also easily skip back-forward in case of errors.
On the other hand, I found it incredibly useful. My mind often wanders when I read, and Squirt solves that.
I found their choice of color scheme jarring. They highlight a specific letter in blue for some reason, and you get a strange optical sensation after staring at that shade of blue for too long. I had to download their js and css, rehost it myself, search through it for the color code, and change it to black. But then I found it very useful.
Re: Squirt: Speed read the web, one word at a time
#10I think this kind of thing is pretty interesting... For me, the reason I can't use it for most stuff I read is that I often need more time to process/understand certain words and names. On the first article from Instapaper that I tried this on, I was fed a sentence containing the words "doxological peregrinations." That threw me off, and then I knew I would have trouble keeping up. It'd be interesting if there was so…
If you pause playback, the surrounding words appear. If you then hold down the right arrow key, you can speedread at your own pace.
I wish keyboard buttons were pressure-sensitive so that you could adjust how fast something is going by pressing harder. But in lieu of that, using arrow keys to scroll through the words is a pretty nice reading experience for me.