32 ms·

Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

• devrelm 13y ago
  As someone with horrible reading speed, the demo on their home page worked pretty well. I'd like to see a demo with some more advanced text. Marketing language is pretty easy to digest quickly. I'd like to see a selection from Gödel, Escher, & Bach or something to see how well I could comprehend more dense texts.
  • doorhammer 13y ago
    It's been awhile since I've really looked into anything speed-reading related, but as far as I recall, there aren't that many good techniques for speed-reading something like Godel Escher Bach, because the bottleneck for comprehension for really dense or deep texts is usually time taken to think about it. When I'm reading some like GEB, I usually end up reading it slowly, then stopping and thinking about it even after I've pretty carefully read it. Then I reread it again :) Conversely, a lot of fiction, especially fiction on the lighter side, tends to repeat itself, or provide more narrative clues as to what's going on, so you can usually pick up what you missed in the context. Of course, that's a really high level recollection of something I'm not an expert in :P I also might just be trying to convince myself that I'm not a slow reader, heh If anyone has any research or info to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it, because I'd definitely like to be able to absorb meaningful/dense information more quickly, even if it were just a small percent increase. I'd also really like to see some third party research/tests with stuff like this and spreeder
    • grogenaut 13y ago
      the big thing when speed reading is to read it, just read it. Your brain will churn on it. Then come back and read it again. Your brain will churn more. Make notations in the margin the whole time. Now finally read it again. You'll get it all done faster than one read through and your brain will churn a ton on it. It's like when you come back to code tutorials a few days later after some practice and know what's going on a bit more and get further. Then go back and read your notations (just put ticks or dots by the stuff that's important in the margins). And now you understand it and you can summarize it in the notes. And this cements the learning. Of course this is a lot of work. I'd rather slam it once, brain index it and maybe come back if I care.
      • shawn-furyan 13y ago
        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 remember little aspects of the section on the re-read. So just blasting through does seem to lower the cognitive load of a re-read, even if your comprehension the first time around is very low or seemingly non-existent.
        • grogenaut 13y ago
          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.
          • shawn-furyan 13y ago
            That's something I don't have the mindset to do. I would sooner drop a book completely than just skip whole passages.
            • doorhammer 13y ago
              I can understand this; I think it depends on what your trying to get out of the book. There are some books I read (for example, I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land) where I like the book well enough, but I'm not particularly into the prose and/or writing style, so I'm okay missing some things here and there. I think that happens to me when I do "decompressing," where I'm reading a book to unwind my brain after having read nothing but papers or technical books for a few weeks. Other times I'm just in the mood to sit down and really experience what the book has to offer. When I'm in that mood, I don't want to sacrifice really taking the time to let a book evoke imagery and mood, in the name of speed. I guess some folks can get that reading a lot faster, but I can't right now.
  • davesque 13y ago
    Yeah, you probably wouldn't get much out of GEB if you read it that way (the first time at least).
• mynameisfiber 13y ago
  Looks like the same technology as spreeder (http://www.spreeder.com/app.php 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).
  • kranner 13y ago
    Spreeder shows one word at a time, right? As someone who speed-reads regularly, I find that reading three words at a time works much better than one word, especially w.r.t. retaining context. It also seems to matter whether chunks are split around punctuation or not, i.e. If the sentence is about to end after two words, the current chunk should not show the first word of the next sentence, just show the last two words of the current sentence. I couldn't find a speed-reading app that did this the way I wanted, so I wrote one for iOS (http://velocireaderapp.com/ http://velocireaderapp.com/) I also agree with the comment below that dense texts are best read without speed-reading. There's a sweet spot between easy and hard, boring and fun for texts that are ideal for speed-reading IMO.
    • phrotoma 13y ago
      Maybe at one point they didn't but Spreeder has had multiword support for some time.
      • kranner 13y ago
        Thanks, I didn't know that.
    • rahimnathwani 13y ago
      I just bought a copy of Velocireader. I like it so far :) Is there any way to raise the speed above 900wpm without going all the way to 1200wpm? The book I'm reading now is fine at 900wpm (and <=3 words per screen), but I think I could go a little faster. At 1200wpm I'm losing comprehension, so ideally I'd like to set it to 1000wpm. I can't see a way to do that. +/- buttons at the top-right of the screen to make +5%/-5% adjustments to the speed without stopping reading would be great. I'll get back to reading...
• teleclimber 13y ago
  At first I thought "Oh dear, another gimmick." but the demo is very compelling. I wish it didn't make the syllables in my head sound like such a metronome, but it definitely works. This could really change how we "ingest" knowledge. Also, I wonder how tired I'd get after reading like that for thirty minutes or a few hours.
  • hobs 13y ago
    Have you tried http://www.spreeder.com/ http://www.spreeder.com/ ? No association, but when working for it I find I can hit 1000 without losing information. Good when I need to cram.
• leephillips 13y ago
  I had a summer job once in high school working in the office of a small business that published test preparation books and related products. They had devoted one of their rooms to a speed reading course; one day the teacher told me that as an employee I could take the course at no charge. I said that I could already read as fast as I could think, and he rolled his eyes and said, "You people who think." I believe that this skill might be useful to some people, but I prefer to avoid reading things that could profitably be speed read, because life is too short for that. For example, I haven't read the OA.
  • listic 13y ago
    By 'think' do you mean 'comprehend the text you're reading' in this context?
    • leephillips 13y ago
      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.
      • npsimons 13y ago
        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/ 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.
• narrator 13y ago
  The best way to read books is with enlarged font on a tablet or e-reader that's resting on an inclined treadmill. You're already ahead of the game time wise because you're exercising and reading at the same time.
• tokenadult 13y ago
  That's interesting. A technology like this was predicted, on theoretical grounds from reading research, in the book Reading in the Brain[1] by Stanislas Dehaene (which I highly recommend as a very good read). For years 500 words per minute (approximately one printed page per minute) has been my baseline speed for most of the material I read in English. I read slower in my second languages, of course. Back in my college days, when I wanted to make sure I wasn't being slowed down in my studies by a too-slow reading speed, I read a lot of books from the university library about reading skill improvement, and several jointly suggested that improving vocabulary improves reading speed. I took a course about English vocabulary based on Latin and Greek word roots, and that did seem to help for years afterward in both reading speed and reading comprehension. [1] http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso-orange.fr/intro.htm http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso-orange.fr/intro.htm AFTER EDIT, TO REPLY TO QUESTION: In this context, "second languages" is a quite normal designation for language(s) acquired after one's native language(s) were acquired. My user profile lists most of mine. I read best in Chinese and in German, besides English.
  • evli 13y ago
    How many second languages can you have?
    • chad_oliver 13y ago
      Ethnologue states that there are 7105 languages in the world[0]. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that you can have x second languages, where x is any number between 0 and 7104. [0] https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics
      • levosmetalo 13y ago
        No, you can have only one second language, and then possibly third, fourth, and so on.
        • gojomo 13y ago
• daikinaircon 13y ago
  I tried an open source version of something similar when I was still in high-school by reading Dracula. The key benefit was't the speed that I could read using the tool, it was that I found I could read much much faster when I later picked up a book. I recently showed spreeder to my girlfriend who found the same thing.
• achalkley 13y ago
  I'm impressed. I often get my Mac to read things to me as I find it difficult to follow text. This was great.
  • ivan_ah 13y ago
    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 http://i.imgur.com/nIO0gRw.png It's a little quick, but it keeps thing interesting ;)
    • achalkley 13y ago
      @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 http://i.imgur.com/WGW1QWk.png - I use cmd + alt + shift + s as my short cut.
• xenophanes 13y ago
  This is called RSVP. It is easier (for the same WPM) with 2-4 words at a time than 1 word. I really hope this catches on more and allows different chunk sizes. 500 wpm with no training is an exaggeration. wpm also depends a lot on which book you're reading. however, RSVP is the fastest way to read and way over 500 wpm is possible with practice.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • axman6 13y ago
    Their FAQ seems to suggest it's more than RSVP, the addition of the red 'centre' and the differing alignment (not centred on the middle of the word but slightly to the left). I've used both and I found Spritz more comfortable on the eyes, less eye movement.
• xenophanes 13y ago
  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-vocalizing than they claim is possible. I've experienced it.
  • devindotcom 13y ago
    This makes no sense to me. Spoken English does not reach 10 words per second even in New York; to hear it, even inwardly, would be to hear a jam of syllables with no respite and hardly any time to parse out the phonemes.
    • xenophanes 13y ago
      Well I can listen to text to speech at ~550 wpm anyway. You apparently think that's impossible, all a jam of syllables. I have friends who do similar. no respite is a matter of practice. time to parse the content is not that hard if you've already learned to RSVP faster. you're basically denying what you don't know how to do, for no apparent reason.
      • grogenaut 13y ago
        you're basically denying the definition. echoing in the brain isn't the same as actually getting the muscles in the throat or the mouth to move. It does slow things down but the muscle movement is way slower and some people don't get rid of it.
    • vacri 13y ago
      As an Australian crossing the US, I looked forward to NYC because finally I'd be in a place where they talked at a proper speed. But when I got there, while it was nice to not have to slow my speech to be understood, I still found the locals were speaking a touch too slow for my liking.
  • 13y ago
• rosser 13y ago
  I wonder whether this uses the front-facing camera for blink detection, particularly at higher WPM settings. A blink typically lasts 100-400ms (per Wikipedia), and 500 WPM is .8333... words per 100ms. A blink thus seems very likely to miss a word or two once you're using this the way its creators intend. I don't see any mention of blinking or mitigating its impact on the site, though.
  • xenophanes 13y ago
    Blinking might explain why I strongly prefer 2-3 word chunks, instead of 1 word chunks, when I read with RSVP. Interesting. I can read some texts at 800 wpm with 2 word chunks but find it a lot more problematic with 1 word chunks so it's flashing twice as fast.
  • davesque 13y ago
    Thank you for helping me figure out why my eyes started burning when I was spritzing. I think you subconsciously try to avoid blinking becuase you know you'll miss a word.
    • shawn-furyan 13y ago
      Perhaps it's called Spritz because the user is meant to keep a spray bottle full of water on hand, spritzing occasionally, so as to obviate the need for blinking :)
  • paulftw 13y ago
    I guess a software could insert a "blink break" every couple of minutes. They could even display an a video commercial during that time, to monetize your blinks. Since everyone seems to try to patent everything: in this comment I claim the invention of a killer business model for speed reading apps. 25 Feb 2014, 4:30pm Sydney time :)
    • gcb0 13y ago
      couldn't care less. it is first to file now, biatch.
• qq66 13y ago
  Very interesting stuff. This demo would be more interesting if I could paste in my own text to confirm my comprehension. I could process Spritz's marketing statement at 500wpm, but it's fairly simple text and may have been optimized for the delivery mechanism. I'd like to try it on some text that I actually have an interest in reading.
• tzs 13y ago
  I played around with something like this a while ago (my files have 2004 timestamps, but those may have updated when I copied stuff to a new computer). I had a command-line based program that took text and displayed it a word at a time. If anyone would like to play around with it, here's my source. Compile: c++ speedread.cpp Usage: ./a.out [delay_in_ms] < text Should work on Mac and Linux, and maybe Windows if you uncomment the first line. (Looks like a #include <stdlib.h> needs to be included to make it compile on Linux. Not sure what I don't need that on Mac). It's kind of fun. I played around with showing words at a constant rate, and with throwing in an extra delay whenever there was punctuation. The version below does the latter. I had thought of this as a possibly good way for displaying text on the limited phones of the early 2000s. Also, I thought it might be an interesting way to display status information on many processes at once. A display line wide enough to display, say, 10 words could be used to display 10 status messages at once instead of one. Oh...2 clause BSD license, if anyone cares. //#include <windows.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <unistd.h> #include <signal.h> #include <sys/time.h> typedef unsigned long DWORD; bool cont = true; void stop( int sig ) { cont = false; } void Sleep( int msec ) { usleep( msec * 1000 ); } DWORD GetTickCount() { static unsigned long base = 0; struct timeval tv; gettimeofday( &tv, 0 ); if ( base == 0 ) base = tv.tv_sec; return (tv.tv_sec - base) * 1000 + tv.tv_usec / 1000; } int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) { int delay = 250; std::string word; if ( argc == 2 ) delay = atoi(argv[1]); signal( SIGINT, stop ); std::cout << "\n\n\n"; int words = 0; DWORD start = GetTickCount(); std::string display_word = ""; while ( std::cin >> word && cont ) { Sleep(delay); ++words; if ( display_word.length() ) display_word += ' '; display_word += word; //if ( display_word.length() < 5 ) //continue; word = display_word; display_word = ""; int punc = word.find("."); if ( punc == std::string::npos ) punc = word.find(","); int pad = 15 - word.length()/2; for ( int i = 0; i < pad; ++i ) std::cout << " "; std::cout << " " << word << " \r"; std::cout.flush(); if ( punc != std::string::npos ) Sleep(2*delay); } DWORD stop = GetTickCount(); float seconds = (stop - start) / 1000.0; printf( "\n%d words in %f seconds\n", words, seconds ); if ( seconds != 0 ) printf( "%f words/second, %f words/minute\n", words/seconds, (60*words)/seconds ); return 0; }
• arikrak 13y ago
  The basic issue with speed reading is that you can't read anything difficult that way.
• danneu 13y ago
  I tried to make something similar while learning Javascript (ClojureScript). http://jsfiddle.net/P7c3s/ http://jsfiddle.net/P7c3s/
  • xmonkee 13y ago
    Care to share the cljs source?
    • danneu 13y ago
      It was my first attempt at writing a client-side Javascript app: https://github.com/danneu/speed-reader/blob/master/src/cljs/speed_reader/core.cljs https://github.com/danneu/speed-reader/blob/master/src/cljs/...
  • minikomi 13y ago
    Interesting. One thing that struck me is I would like a small pause on full stop or comma.. to digest that thunk before continuing on and allow for blinks.
    • axman6 13y ago
      This Spritz thing seems to do that, which I found very comfortable.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• lukev 13y ago
  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 thinking about it. Even if this approach is faster overall, it makes reading more like listening to audio or watching a video; it's a big pain to rewind or pause. Secondly, this is actually slower than true speed reading or skimming because it forces you to read every word. Truly accomplished readers will often read material at a very superficial level, only dipping in and reading consistently when they encounter a novel concept. Essentially, they can use semantic compression to increase their reading speed by only bothering to read what they find to be relevant. This operates on every level, from the page to the chapter to the paragraph to the sentence. It isn't perfect, of course, but it's always possible to back up if one finds crucial information has been missed. Finally, even though this tool is truly excellent for breaking the subvocalization habit that hampers most slow readers, once you learn how to read without subvocalizing it becomes a bit redundant. For example, looking at Spritz, I cranked the speed to 500. It felt pretty good, like I was reading fast. Then I went and took a traditional reading speed test and clocked in at 700wpm, with 95% comprehension. So I'm not sure my overall speed is better with Spritz. That said, I'll probably keep coming back to this or technologies like this, now that I'm aware of them. They seem a really good way to force oneself into the speed-reading mindset - I have a feeling that doing this for 60 seconds before a normal reading session would improve reading speed substantially.
  • Heliosmaster 13y ago
    I find it very comparable to hearing. Whenever you hear something, you hear it word by word. And similarly you can't immediately go back (you have to stop it, "rewind it" and play it again). Very interesting concept, though.
  • sgoody 13y ago
    Huh, strange thing is it seems like I just can read that quickly anyway. Started on the banner at 250wpm, pretty comfortable, went straight to 500wpm on the banner and still fairly comfortable to read. So I thought I'd have a go at just reading some plain text as quickly as I comfortably could and it turns out that I can read more quickly than I do. I don't know why I don't read more quickly than I do, perhaps it down to comprehension, but I think in the future for articles I'm not trying to fully absorb that I may try to just read them more quickly!
• bmelton 13y ago
  This is amazing. Not only can I now magically read at 350WPM, but I noticed what I believe is a spelling error at 350WPM ("Integrate" was spelled as either "Intergate" or "Intergrate")
• arvinsim 13y ago
  Good for reading practice or for easy-to-digest text but I don't think it would fly when the text material's concept is unfamiliar.
• kayoone 13y ago
  As a german i find the name a bit unfortunate. To spritz = spritzen means to squirt/spray coat and in german is often associated with ejaculating. I don't know if this name would fly around here, but maybe thats why it would. Could make for some funny conversations.
  • mappum 13y ago
    Looks like one of the founders is from Munich. Maybe he is just a little trolly.
    • Argorak 13y ago
      Being trollish doesn't make your name any better. And yeah, I find the name very unfortunate as well, especially in combination with call to actions like "Click here to Spritz".
      • ntaso 13y ago
        Learn how to spritz
  • gcb0 13y ago
    i don't speak a word in german other than beer varieties and i also read that as something like spraying words. only on the second take i got the sprint similarity. ...Completely missed the climax though.
  • anarchitect 13y ago
    It's also an Italian cocktail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spritz_(alcoholic_beverage) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spritz_(alcoholic_beverage)
  • ntaso 13y ago
    I feel the same. I can't read their FAQ without cringing/laughing. Don’t spritz me you spritzin’ spritzer! (wtf?) Will spritzing burn my retinas? (only if he spritzes in your eye...)
  • 13y ago
• aquilax 13y ago
  This reminds me of ZAP Reader http://www.zapreader.spreeder.com/ http://www.zapreader.spreeder.com/
• zhaphod 13y ago
  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.
  • CatMtKing 13y ago
    I have never had much luck speed-reading technical papers. It's too difficult for me to interpret and think critically together -- words flashing by will go unevaluated I think.
  • Kiro 13y ago
    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.
    • zhaphod 13y ago
      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.
      • Kiro 13y ago
        > I do just fine reading at 250 wpm. Some times I feel just being good enough has lost its value. What is fine? What is good enough? I think it's an absurd statement that in no way is an argument against reading at 500 wpm.
        • zhaphod 13y ago
          Looks like your comprehension is suffering. No wonder you said 1wpm. Read what I wrote again will you: >Most of the gen-pop is around 200-250 wpm which is why I >said it is good enough. Don't be a troll. At around 200-250 wpm you are in the middle of the normal distribution hence good enough.
• jotux 13y ago
  There's a bookmarklet that will do something similar for any text on a page. It's called Force Feed: http://qwerjk.com/force-feed http://qwerjk.com/force-feed
• drham 13y ago
  Someone has implemented a similar process in an iOS app called Velocity (http://velocityapp.com http://velocityapp.com). I downloaded it a few weeks ago and have tried it off and on, I have trouble for the use case of reading feeds (it integrates mostly with rss feeds I think) in that I tend to do that reading in distraction-prone environments but it might work better for other mediums
• buro9 13y ago
  I know my eyesight is bad (test scheduled for today and new glasses overdue), but I really struggled with this. I tried multiple times to read the example, but would stumble to comprehend the shape of a word or two, lose my way, and have to rewind back to the beginning. Overall it felt considerably slower and more broken, less rhythmic. My comprehension felt lower, I felt I spent far more time comprehending the shapes of the words rather than the totality of the meaning expressed. I know my eyesight is bad, that I am long-sighted and colour blind, but this was a painful and slow reading experience. Some words took so much concentration to figure out that I'd forgotten the words that preceded it, and lost context. Without the ability to rewind this or to see a larger context, I would avoid this like the plague. Clearly an outlier as everyone else is raving.
• anarchitect 13y ago
  Very interesting, and I did manage to read 500WPM without too much of a struggle, but I did not enjoy reading with this technique. I feel uncomfortable not knowing when a paragraph is going to end, and the relentless onslaught of words took the fun out of it.
  • alecbenzer 13y ago
    I'd wonder how much of that is just from being used to reading more traditionally, though.
• vanniktech 13y ago
  I already built a cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux) application based on the "SpeedReading" concept, which is similar to Spritz. http://vanniktech.de/SpeedReader/ http://vanniktech.de/SpeedReader/ I would like to get some feedback.
• bambax 13y ago
  I had no trouble reading at 500 wpm, and although I seemed to miss a few words (maybe due to blinking?), that didn't interfere with comprehension. But the French translation is gibberish!! This is unprofessional and insulting. If you can't be bothered to hire a professional translator, please don't offer content in that language at all.
• agumonkey 13y ago
  This is Fn awesome. I fail in so many weird ways I like it. I see two processes, my eyes see the stream of word, but I read in a different order when overwhelmed, or at least I cant tell what order words came in if the context allow for both. When trying 500 wpm I'm lagging behind about 0.25s regularly, but, as they say, if you let it be and relax you can keep the pipeline going. I even feel a slight pressure in my upper brain, just a little, no cramp, a slight dizziness. Even more relaxing. So the scanning part of reading is actually a bottleneck ? I feel like I'm learning how asian people feel when they read.
• zwischenzug 13y ago
  These websites always remind me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhg7vxTM9Q4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhg7vxTM9Q4 it seems human nature changes little. More seriously, it's a fun toy, but as others pointed out, reading is not simply about reading one word at a time.
• ntaso 13y ago
  A bit OT: In 2006, Volkswagen made an ad in the States for the Golf GTI and called it "turbo cojones". Apparently, they didn't know that "cojones" means testicles. They didn't do their research. While spritz is a seemingly normal German word (spritzer means splash and the logo shows a water drop), the phrase I was spritzing is actually an extremely bad branding choice. It's usually said in a specific context and means: I was ejaculating. Edit: It could also mean I spilled the tomato sauce, but it's still poor.
  • brokenparser 13y ago
    Why is this so bad? I'd be proud of my spritzing turbo cojones.
  • corin_ 13y ago
    Where does it have that meaning? I've never heard it used that way (UK, but not heard it from other countries either). The meaning it has to me is the same one Google gives as its definition: spritz verb gerund or present participle: spritzing 1. squirt or spray a liquid at or on to (something) in quick short bursts. "she spritzed her neck with cologne"
• davidw 13y ago
  "Spritz" is a drink here in Padova where I live: http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2004/11/08/spritz http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2004/11/08/spritz http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2008/09/17/the-spritz-from-austria-to-venice-and-back http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2008/09/17/the-spritz-from... My standing offer to take visitors out to sample a few in the piazza is always open.
  • duiker101 13y ago
    AFAIK Spritz is generally acknowledged in all Italy as a drink but it's a generic name. Different story is if you ask for an Aperol.
    • davidw 13y ago
      It has gained popularity in Italy lately, but it's from this area. Yes, 'spritz' is a generic name, and might be made from Aperol or Campari, but the Aperol version is probably the most popular. I prefer the Campari one myself.
• Schiphol 13y ago
  The Spanish demo text is abysmal. Please get a native Spanish speaker to help out.
• angerman 13y ago
  Now. Where do I get this for my kindle? Add a play/pause button and a (continuous) knob to tune the speed (with reverse?). An option to jump back a sentence or a paragraph? Or show me the current position on the actual page? (Some way to make spacial position meaningful.) And I'm pretty sure I'm sold.
  • Pitarou 13y ago
    And I think Amazon would like their customers to read more books, too...
• Pitarou 13y ago
  That really is impressive. I compared it with the speed-reading app at spreeder.com, and Spritz's claims do seem to be born out. 500 wpm was a little too much for me at Spreeder, but with Spritz's improvements it became manageable.
• _kfb 13y ago
  Impressive, and interesting, but with one problem: I, like a lot of people, have floaters in my eyes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floaters 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.
  • DonGateley 13y ago
    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.
• spark3k 13y ago
  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!
• a3_nm 13y ago
  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.)
  • rjzzleep 13y ago
    ok it's not really my job to prove their app, but to me it seems logical that reducing eye movement leads to higher performance. a quick search on google scholar [1]. i'm happy for them, yet another thing i can stroke off my todo list. tyvm [1] http://www.citeulike.org/group/6810/article/3309870 http://www.citeulike.org/group/6810/article/3309870
    • a3_nm 13y ago
      Extremely interesting. I'm puzzled by this paper, though, and by the number it reports: > 1600 wpm for spritzing (that's > 25 words per second), but even this 790 wpm median rate for standard reading (called PAGE, page 5, column 2, line 2) is something of a mystery to me...
  • ipedrazas 13y ago
    Same for Spanish... makes no sense whatsoever
  • frik 13y ago
    The german language text could be better. Also some words are broken up, and some very long words still there in full length... makes it harder to read.
• 8note 13y ago
  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.
• jpatte 13y ago
  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 !
• Mizza 13y ago
  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 https://github.com/Miserlou/OpenSpritz ..hopefully we'll see more of this stuff everywhere. Good work, please thrive!
  • shirman 13y ago
    Wow! It's looking great! Let's make it like bookmarklet, like here – http://qwerjk.com/force-feed http://qwerjk.com/force-feed and you forget about lines and pointer http://upload.amazingperformancestudio.com/image/1c05121h1545 http://upload.amazingperformancestudio.com/image/1c05121h154...
    • hadem 13y ago
      I really like your bookmarklet. Few quick notes I have after using it for a few minutes. - It will sometimes begin to read source code. - There doesn't seem to be an obvious way to close the reader? - Customization for colors/fonts/positioning would be great! Great work!
  • nodata 13y ago
    +1 for Android app soon!
  • hadem 13y ago
    Created a JSFiddle from your current source: http://jsfiddle.net/Wh7d2/ http://jsfiddle.net/Wh7d2/
  • mistercow 13y ago
    I forked and created a bookmarklet: https://gist.github.com/osuushi/9261629 https://gist.github.com/osuushi/9261629 (well, actually a script that builds a bookmarklet).
• atmosx 13y ago
  The thing is that by reading the fast pacing changing words, I get anxious. It's not pleasure, it's frustrating or maybe it's me not reading text in my native language. Another fact, that I think a designer team could adjust is not having a perspective the entire text, paragraph, etc. bothers me. Other than that, when you need to speed read, it's true, it's faster than moving your eyes left-right (or right-left if you're Arabic).
• littleq0903 13y ago
  command-line version: https://asciinema.org/a/7882 https://asciinema.org/a/7882 pull request is welcome :D
• littleq0903 13y ago
  the point of Spritz is not showing one word per time, but the alignment of words, see here: http://www.spritzinc.com/blog/ http://www.spritzinc.com/blog/ they told there's a point called ORP, it's the point on the word that people could recognize the word quickly. so if you align the point of each word, the reading of words will be easy. the second point is reducing eye balls' rotation. this really improved the way I read in English, love it :D
• neilsharma 13y ago
  You can increase the speed to any WPM you want using chrome developer tools: In the dropdown menu where you select a WPM rate, change the "data-value" attribute values in the li elements to whatever you want. Also, although it helped my speed reading considerably, I would not adopt the current version of the product because it does not allow for pauses (eyes get tired, sneezes, blinks, distractions, etc), re-reads, time to ponder, etc. However, I think these problems can be addressed with very simple UI tweeks: 1. (On mobile) Push to read. Release to pause 2. Scroll to go back/forward 3. Ability to start and skip to other areas in the text, probably via some table of contents 4. Some estimate of remaining pages/words. I like to scroll ahead to see how long an article is. If the article is gone, I have no way of sensing duration. A displayed word count might help, but I'd imagine that few people can easily process number of words as a duration.
• fab13n 13y ago
  Very interesting experiment. I'm surprised to be able to read (albeit only when completely focused) at 500 English wpm without being a native speaker. Some observations: * My eyes muscles feel oddly relaxed while reading, whereas in contrast I need I mental focus to understand the text. It's really hypnotic, in a weird but not unpleasant way. * Keeping focused on a single point for minutes, I get a disconcerting tunnel effect. As my brain hasn't seen my surroundings for too long, it stops recomposing it, and that makes me conscious of how small my precise vision area is. This also contributes to the hypnotic effect of that thing. * It absolutely needs an intuitive throttle. My optimal speed varies continuously, because the information density varies a lot within a single text, and some information can be perceived to have widely different levels of relevance for different readers. I'd probably like the speed to be controlled by the mouse's y axis. * Quick indexing: I want to easily jump anywhere in the page, not read it sequentially.
• keithnoizu 13y ago
  I have some very rough proto code for something along the lines of this from 2004 with per word weighting and ability to speed up or slow down general flow. How is this even remotely patentable. This has to have been done a thousand times. Do the the red letters and black lines make that much difference.
• frik 13y ago
  It works good for English, but it gets harder with languages like German with longer words.
• burkestar 13y ago
  2 things: 1) With the overload of information, we've adapted to skim not only sentences but skip over entire sections of content because we instantly perceive them as not having valuable information. Factoring this in, I would think our reading speeds are over 1000 wpm. I got the gist of the page by skimming the first 2 paragraphs and skipping the rest as it was extraneous. 2) limiting it to 1 word at a time is counter to how most speed reading programs teach to extend the width of how many words you can read simultaneously. Some people can grok the meaning of an entire line of text without (or minimal) saccading. Their eyes just go straight down the middle of the page. It would be nice if the app helped "train" you to be able to increase your reading width without loss of comprehension. I might actually use it then.
• FailMore 13y ago
  From this page: http://www.spritzinc.com/the-science/ http://www.spritzinc.com/the-science/ This is amazing. How do I make it pause? This seems to be the advantage of text 'being there' - I can leave and come back. I want to do the same with Spritz. I also think that a visual cue that lets me know where I am in the content would make me feel more satisfied. A bit like when using Sublime the space in the top right that gives you the context of where you are in the document. I'd love to see myself racing through a document. I think it would convey your value proposition even more too. Good luck. It's great. J
• gtani 13y ago
  poss. related: colored gradients https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784
• quarterto 13y ago
  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.
  • kenny_r 13y ago
    I found the demo very impressive but I too have a large blue bar persisting in my vision right now. Very peculiar.
    • millzlane 13y ago
      I too still have the blue bar in my vision. It's been there for about 4 minutes. I'm also sitting about 4' away from a 40" TV. I was able to read everything at all the speeds though.
  • Dirlewanger 13y ago
    Yup, switching from that page to HN was not pleasant.
  • triangleman 13y ago
    And they want 15% of the world reading like this by 2016? (Did I remember that right?)
    • combiner 13y ago
      I thought it was 15% of world's texts... apparently my comprehension is not so good with this.
• DennisP 13y ago
  > Can you see everything that I read? > Well, we have to provide the content to you, don’t we? For more information, check out our Privacy Policy. Or, the app could run locally after downloading a dictionary. Just sayin'.
• piato 13y ago
  A sincere and non-troll question - I'd be really interested in hearing from people who have a major use for speed reading. I'm finding it difficult to visualise the material such readers are encountering - are they reading for pleasure or work? Presumably, if the former, reading speed is unrelated to enjoyment (in fact, a slight negative correlation), while, if the latter, isn't the time spent actually reading a vanishingly tiny portion of digestion? It takes me (and I'd imagine most people?) around 5 minutes to read a menu, for instance, of which time my estimate would be that around 5-10 seconds were spent actually reading the words. But this technology is clearly of great interest to people - what am I missing?
• jjgreen 13y ago
  Speed reading is like speed sex, you're really missing the point.
  • corin_ 13y ago
    I'd say that in both cases it can go both ways, as sometimes your goal could be to get something specific from it rather than to enjoy the activity.
• transfire 13y ago
  If they want to truly increase the reading speed of the average reader they would have to show phrases not words. Slow readers read a word at a time. Fast readers take in whole phrases, lines or more at a time.
• robinduckett 13y ago
  Is the key idea here the highlighting of the letter? I made something similar (last time something like this was revealed on HN) here: http://robinduckett.github.io/orwell/ http://robinduckett.github.io/orwell/ Change to one word at a time, 500 words per minute. I can still read it just fine.
  • adsche 13y ago
    Strange, I (non-native speaker) can't anymore, while having had no problem with spritz at 500wpm. But otoh their text is much easier to comprehend. Still, with the marked letter it just felt easier. I'm guessing the one marked letter in the same position keep my eyes focused on that point, making the reading less stressful.
• oflordal 13y ago
  The nice thing with this isn't so much the quick reading but rather that it is well suited for gear and other smart watches (glass as well?). This makes it a lot more feasible to read for example mails on small screens.
• sireat 13y ago
  I struggle to find a use case for Spritz. If I am reading for pleasure I am reading slowly, savoring each word and I want to go at a variable speed say 300-600wpm. If I am reading something where each word is not important, then I am scanning, reading a line at a time and getting 1000+wpm.
• ronaldx 13y ago
  I had no problem keeping up with the 500 words per minute example, but was bored after a few seconds of marketing copy that I couldn't skip over.
• DaveGalt 13y ago
  The only way to read faster is to comprehend faster.None of these words flashing programs will work unless you learn toRead with the conceptual right brain.In essence, comprehension must come first.Otherwise it's like learning to use the gas pedal before you learn to use the steering wheel.
• DaveGalt 13y ago
  The only way to read faster is to comprehend faster.None of these words flashing programs will work unless you learn toRead with the conceptual right brain.In essence, comprehension must come first.Otherwise it's like learning to use the gas pedal before you learn to use the steering wheel. Take a look at www.readspeeder.com To see what I mean.
• syllogism 13y ago
  The problem here is that regressive eye movements are an inherent part of reading. The text in their example doesn't necessitate any saccades, but arbitrary text will! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movements_in_reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movements_in_reading Eye Movements in Reading, Rayner (1983): http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Lx51Brw60cMC&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=regressive+eye+movement+reading&source=bl&ots=0wbDkSY19C&sig=jX-aTcczbz47F_Jo-wIk6o__9vQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0LIMU7-vKYaGlAXCqIHIDw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=regressive%20eye%20movement%20reading&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Lx51Brw60cMC&pg=PA79&lpg...
• nodata 13y ago
  Java RSVP reader from years ago: http://trevor.smith.name/EST/ http://trevor.smith.name/EST/
• X4 13y ago
  I can already read about 1200wpm normally, without that technique, but how fast can I go with this technique? Honest question. I've read that speed readers read 1500wpm, but I didn't learn this. Just got bored reading slow and tried some stuff. There is a big bad side to this. At school I had to read a part 3-4 times at least, because otherwise they didn't believe that I already read it. That's because everyone else was still reading.
• johnwatson11218 13y ago
  I have been using zapreader at www.zapreader.com/reader for years now. Sometimes on the weekends I take about 20 long form articles and put them into the zap reader js form. I find that I get the main idea of an article much faster, I notice patterns better when I read at that speed. I wish amazon would incorporate this technology into all the kindle reading apps, instead of "features" like how long I have left in a chapter. One hack for easily putting the articles in to zapreader is to look for a print feature. When the article has a print lay out it is easier to copy and paste the text.
• ajimix 13y ago
  Javascript version: http://codepen.io/ajimix/full/zEdaL http://codepen.io/ajimix/full/zEdaL
  • shirman 13y ago
    add boomarklet support please, it is easy
  • utopkara 13y ago
    Looks great. Bookmarklet or chrome extension would be awesome!
• DonGateley 13y ago
  I get pretty bad dry eye from blink inhibition just using a display. I'm pretty sure this would exacerbate that problem by a significant factor. I would need to use it in conjunction with a wearable blink detector/stimulator which doesn't yet exist.
• Eleutheria 13y ago
  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.
• tels 13y ago
  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.
• polskibus 13y ago
  I wonder if prolonged exposition to sth like Spritz can trigger an epileptic seizure? It sure blinks a lot while displaying words.
• djhworld 13y ago
  Could really do with a "night mode" like feature. I wish a lot of websites/apps provided this to be honest, reading black text on a white background is awful
• Paul_S 13y ago
  "Spritzing is reading text with Spritz Inc.’s patent-pending technology." You might as well patent the alphabet, I don't mind. Albeit mostly because I don't live in the US. I don't see how your online service will be able to compete with a free program that does this locally on my machine at no charge. Then again I'm fairly out of touch with the world. I heard a sales-person describe a website as a cloud service and I no longer think I understand technology anymore.
  • mistercow 13y ago
    Beeline is also patent-pending, and you could make a similar argument there. I have doubts that these patents would hold up in court (although the author of Beeline is a lawyer, so he probably knows better than I do), but I suspect their primary purpose is to dissuade free copycats from trying in the first place.
• huntergdavis 13y ago
  Couldn't help myself. http://www.hunterdavis.com/2014/02/25/okiu/ http://www.hunterdavis.com/2014/02/25/okiu/
• vincentleeuwen 13y ago
  Interesting. I hope this works on boring stuff I don't really want to read. Bye bye legal documents.
• nevster 13y ago
  Did anyone else 'View Source' so they could quickly scan the text that was going to be displayed for all the other wpm values?
• kimonos 13y ago
  Sounds very interesting!
• Semiapies 13y ago
  I'm reminded of the Lirevite project that did this back in the day, but I can't find any mention of it, anymore, aside from this 2006 post: http://craphound.com/?p=1726 http://craphound.com/?p=1726
• matznerd 13y ago
  I used to use a plugin called Spreader that does this for the browser. More recently I've started using QuickReader on my phone and I do by line (3 words per line) with a larger font. The app really increases my reading speed and I highly recommend it.
• wordofchristian 13y ago
  It seems to really break down when dealing with parenthesis and other kinds of punctuation that uses matching. Just from my personal testing on the linked page it got really confusing when they got to the founders section about "Frank Waldman (CEO and Co-founder), Maik Maurer (CTO and Co-founder)" The parenthesis here, rather than showing a complete group, end up getting broken apart and stuck to whatever word they're adjacent words. "...Co Founder)"
• isawczuk 13y ago
  Good job. What's more interesting many HN hackers (including me) thought about the concept or build similar products some time ago. But it take guts to stick with a product and find a way for monetization. The same applies to WhatsApp / Flappy Bird / Instagram / etc., anyone could replicate their idea or had better product before them (ex. ICQ, Jabber, etc). But it take guts to stick with product and monetize it. Sometimes I regret that I'm tech guru not a business guru..
• adamconroy 13y ago
  Alternative title : how to comprehend 0 concepts per minute without any training
• ybaumes 13y ago
  At 400wpm I began to skip most of words.. :-/
• pron 13y ago
  Just tried it. I'm not a native English speaker, and yet I found the 500 wpm speed far too slow, not to mention the loss of the ability to go back and forth. It works: I was able to read and understand, but it's slow, causes sea-sickness, and not comfortable for more than two paragraphs of text. I guess it can work for reading emails on a watch.
• benrhughes 13y ago
  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.speedy 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.
• berlingozzo 13y ago
  From Linux command line, read a pdf 500 words per minute, with centered words, like Spritz: pdftotext paper.pdf - | sed 's/\ /\n/g' | awk '{for(i=0;i<20-length($1)/2;i++)printf(" ");printf("%s \r", $1);system("sleep 0.12")}' NJOY! credits: www.twitter.com/berlingozzo @just2n, the above command is so short I was able to tweet it! :))