5 ms·
The rules implemented are very simple (taken from the patent application [1], the exact numbers are configurable). If there are <= 3 letters, one letter is b
by red0point 5y ago
The rules implemented are very simple (taken from the patent application [1], the exact numbers are configurable).
If there are <= 3 letters, one letter is bold.
If there are == 4 letters, two letters are bold.
If there are > 4 letters, 40% of all letters are bold.
There is this claim as the first text on the website:
We are happy if as many people as possible can use the advantage of Bionic Reading. For this reason, Bionic Reading should be able to be integrated into existing apps and services. The benefit for the reader should be the main focus.
If that is truly correct, why not publish these 3 rules? Why hide it behind multiple patent applications and trademarks? Why spend all this time and money on patents and an API that probably involve sending all text to some servers, just so that these 3 lines of code can be executed?
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/DE102017112916A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/DE102017112916A1/en
- elil17 5y agoLooking at the example in one of the apps (Reeder 5) doesn’t work 100% the same as the patent. For example, neumann (a last name) is bolded as NEUMANn the first time it appears and NEUMann the second time it appears.
- sdoering 5y agoBeing a cynical person I would answer your questions with: Because money.
- renato_casutt 5y agoI decided to take out a patent a long time ago. Unfortunately I had to make bad experiences, which is why I now want to offer BR as API. With the rules it depends on whether it is short, medium or long words. But in principle it is simple. As simple as we humans read. Eye - brain - representation products (words)
- noeltock 5y agoGreat product that might get lost because of overthinking the business model (say that even as a fellow Swiss). Think the giga-opportunity here is for a chrome extension, releasing it for free or freemium won't interfere with your patent (and if you don't, someone else will, regardless of the legal aspects). Either way, congratulations on this innovation, it's elegant.
- renato_casutt 5y agoIch danke Dir vielmals noeltock. Ja ich hatte bereits zwei Browser Extensions (Chrome, Firefox) als Beta-Versionen. Aber die Erkenntnis war, dass sehr viele Websites — da diese ja individuell erstellt werden — keine gute Experience ergab. Deswegen habe ich mit Silvio Rizzi (Reeder5) getestet, wie es am besten nutzbar gemacht werden kann. Hab aus Fehlern gelernt, aber wir denken dass es viele Entwickler gibt, die BR in ihren Leseprodukten anbieten möchten... Aber vielleicht liegen wir da ja auch falsch. Man muss es versuchen und dann weitere Erkenntnis daraus ziehen. A liaba Gruass us Chur Renato
- xvector 5y agoThe problem is that since you've patented these 3 lines of code, I'm not sure many other can legally write a browser extension for this functionality. I'd like to use this in Safari on iOS, for example, but... I can't.
- toxik 5y agoJust change the logic ever so slightly, I’m sure it’s possible to do this in many ways.
- liminvorous 5y agoClearly these three rules are a fact about human pyschology rather than an invention and should be ineligible for patents. I understand that New Zealand law for example classifies pure software inovation as categorically not being invention. I'm unsure of what hoops you'd have to jump through to take advantage of this fact to release a browser extension for example, but it seems like it should be possible, though code signing and stuff might cause problems.
- pc86 5y agoHonestly it's just one hoop - are you confident you won't be sued, and if you're wrong, are you willing to pay for the legal defense?
- 5y ago
- traceroute66 5y ago> Unfortunately I had to make bad experiences That has to be the most unfortunate choice of wording ! More seriously though, does BR work in your native Swiss German ?
- renato_casutt 5y agoSorry for my bad English traceroute66... I came across BR during my studies as a typographic designer. There was a language problem there. That's why I realized that reading and listening are completely different. You can understand a language by listening to it. But reading the same language does not mean that you can understand it.
- traceroute66 5y agoNo problem, but the second half of my question was genuine. I can't imagine this working too well with German words ? e.g. how much of Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften, Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung, Lebensabschnittpartner or Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän would you need to highlight ? I don't speak German, but surely with compound words, your concept doesn't work that well ?
- insta_anon 5y agoSlightly off-topic - while I know that there are these lists of “crazy long German words” to make fun of each one of your examples besides the “Donau..” I actually used normally in conversations in the past. Even just a couple days ago I came across “Personalisierungsinfrastrukturkomponente“ [0] in a news article, so it is not just a rumor that Germans like long-ass words :) [0] Apparently these are the devices used by the government to verify passports and / or fingerprints of refugees.
- andai 5y agoFor languages with compound words it looks like you'd need to parse out the sub-words and bold the first few letters of each one. That's doable but now you need language-specific dictionary files etc.
- lekevicius 5y agoI'm quite certain I could fit BR logic in less than 300 bytes of JS Regex. There is no need for an API here.
- wussboy 5y agoComment favourited
- matsemann 5y agoI wonder how bolding more on uniqueness would work? Instead of just first characters. For instance now THeir and THere will be bolded the same, on a quick glance that can be confusing. (Using caps as HN can't do bold) Would it increase pattern recognition in the brain if it instead was THeIr and THeRe, or some other variant where the bolding highlights the unique parts of a word compared to other common words? Well I wrote the idea here, so don't try patent it, hehe.
- renato_casutt 5y agoHaha...nice The basic problem with reading is that your eye needs a fixed point...that's why they should be "blocks". This one doesn't have to be at the very beginning though ;) But cool comment Hehe
- matsemann 5y agoTrue. You made me remember a different concept, where words would flash at the same point, but centered around some fixed highlighted character per word. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ky8DP55YEO0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ky8DP55YEO0 Edit: but thank you for sharing your concept here, very interesting, and I like the discussions it created.
- renato_casutt 5y agoThank you matsemann
- moritonal 5y agoIronically (given the GP comment) this tech also died because of their aggressive attempt to commercialise it.
- kranner 5y agoI had an iOS speed-reading app at the time and considered integrating their API because users requested it. Not only would they have required individual users to sign in to their API via my app, IIRC their terms allowed them to track what each user was reading. Naturally I declined. I hope OP’s terms of use are more respecting of user privacy.
- cushychicken 5y agoBecause these folks deserve to eat and pay rent for a few years upon discovering something so useful.
- krageon 5y agoSo make that part of the mission statement. There's no need to pretend to be a bunch of saints.
- todd8 5y agoI don't really see it that way. Yes, the about link leads to a page where the goal of improving the way people can read is described, but it would be odd to see them say, "and we expect to make money from working on this project". Each of us is motivated by different goals. I am motivated to have a comfortable life, and I've worked for different companies over time to achieve this. I also find personal satisfaction in helping others so I've occasionally make charitable contributions of time and money, but I don't expect that everyone else is going to make the same choices I have. We don't know the motivation that drove the inventors of this new reading technology. Maybe it was to simply make money for riotous living, but it could be that they have a critically sick partner that needs expensive surgery. These are personal and private choices that I don't feel a need to weigh. Improved reading technology sounds like a good thing for not just the inventor, but for all of us. When I buy some peaches from a farmer at a stand by the highway, I want the peach more than I want the dollar I have in my pocket. The farmer wants the dollar more than the peach. After I buy the peach we are both better off. I don't need to feel that the farmer is a non-profit farmer. I expect the farmer to be happier after the sale, for otherwise next year he may not even be there for my benefit during peach season. What I do expect, is that the farmer doesn't misrepresent his product, that he doesn't steal my credit card number, that he holds up his side of the bargain; if so, next year, I will be there to buy his peaches again. I've invented a number of important technologies and benefited from doing so. Some, when I worked for others, ended up being patented. Such is the environment we find ourselves in, but for many of my ideas I chose not to protect them by patents and let these be adopted by standards organizations instead. Personally, I don't think patents are a good fit for software, and I would rather see better use of copyright protection for software or a simpler much shorter patent, say three years for software. The open source software movement has been an amazing gift to humanity, but so has the deluge of products (and peaches) produced for the profit motive.
- rsanek 5y agoYou could reduce this to just rounding using the 40% rule + minimum of 1 bold letter right? 1 * .4 = .4, 1 bold letter (minimum) 2 * .4 = .8, 1 bold letter 3 * .4 = 1.2, 1 bold letter 4 * .4 = 1.6, 2 bold letters etc.
- ranit 5y agoAs GP said, the exact numbers are configurable, therefore your simplification may not work. BTW, none of the examples (the first text and all the subsequent variants) on the web site follows exactly these 3 rules, it must be something more.
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- boldreader 5y agoI have hacked together an implementation of this here https://boldreader.github.io/boldreader/ https://boldreader.github.io/boldreader/
- rawoke083600 5y ago> If there are > 4 letters, 40% of all letters are bold. Very cool :) I would have thought there is also value in bolding the last-x-amount of letters. I forgot the name of the "concept" but it's been shown that the beginning and ending parts of words are the most "recognizable". You usually see a sample of that on those 'silly-facebook-posts', example: "I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg" [1] https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/can-you-read https://www.ecenglish.com/learnenglish/lessons/can-you-read
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- boldreader 5y ago