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I 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

by mbrock 12y ago

I 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"...

sillysaurus3 12y ago
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.
mercer 12y ago
For me it's more than just the sentence that I miss reading. I miss the context of the entire paragraph and, to a lesser degree, being able to see the preceding and following paragraphs. I recently rediscovered the joy of reading longer pieces that take their sweet time to build up to a point, or to explain something complex. These texts are generally both longer and denser than, say, blog posts, and while paragraphs don't always require repeated reading, I usually find myself skipping back and forth between them to get a good mental image of the way they relate to each other. I think tools such as this might be useful for reading relatively simple texts (blog posts, biographies, certain novels), but if anything I want to do less of that in the first place.

by mbrock 12y ago

sillysaurus3 12y ago

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.

mercer 12y ago

For me it's more than just the sentence that I miss reading. I miss the context of the entire paragraph and, to a lesser degree, being able to see the preceding and following paragraphs. I recently rediscovered the joy of reading longer pieces that take their sweet time to build up to a point, or to explain something complex. These texts are generally both longer and denser than, say, blog posts, and while paragraphs don't always require repeated reading, I usually find myself skipping back and forth between them to get a good mental image of the way they relate to each other. I think tools such as this might be useful for reading relatively simple texts (blog posts, biographies, certain novels), but if anything I want to do less of that in the first place.