4 ms·

Zap Reader - Download to your brain as fast as you can handle

20 points by mildweed 17y ago

mildweed 17y ago
Info on the science behind this speed reading technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Serial_Visual_Presentation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Serial_Visual_Presentatio...
- tokenadult 17y ago
  http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
AndrewWarner 17y ago
I wish this was integrated into instapaper and the iPhone Kindle.
radu_floricica 17y ago
Link is down, but if it's what I think, it's not really that useful. I played with something like that years ago, and more recently tried using it for reading on my phone, and the limitations are: 1) Compared to classic reading, you can't stop or go back easily. For some uses I suppose it's ok, but most times you want to pause during reading to think a bit about what you just read, or simply rest for a coupe of seconds, and this way you can't. 2) For mobile phones it's useful, but simply not as pleasant. I expected to get a headache which didn't materialize, but still didn't enjoy it as much.
- jdunck 17y ago
  On #1, that's a simple interface problem. What if you could tap to pause, swipe left to go back 5sec, swipe w/ 2 fingers to go back 15 seconds, &c? I've used RSVP a fair bit. It's not for pleasure reading. It's for very quickly deserializing info.
jrockway 17y ago
I don't read words all the same speed, but this application forces you to. Very. Monotonous. I have a vague sense of uneasiness related to robots reading me literature now...
mdoar 17y ago
Ran out of space when I tried it with a Project Gutenberg text. Also, seemed slower than advertised at the upper rates?
zasz 17y ago
This was incredibly painful to use. It seems to display both short words like "and" and "to" as long as it does longer words like "availability." I don't need to dwell as long as I do on short words as I do on longer words, and I expect most people would do the same thing. Also, the eye naturally likes to move around and pass over certain phrases and pause at others (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_in_language_reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_in_language_readin...). With this setup, you have to keep staring at the same spot. Interesting idea, but doesn't seem all that useful, particularly if you can already read quite quickly.
tigerthink 17y ago
The limiting reagent on my comprehension process is not the speed at which I can shove words through my eyes.
blhack 17y ago
A lot of you seem to not like this very much... While certainly not very useful for things like technical manuals or mathematics texts, for things like news articles, I love this. The threshold at which I have to actually remind myself to pay attention is about 450wpm...
s3graham 17y ago
Seems strange. I'm pretty sure I read clumps of words, not individual words when I'm going quickly. (also, disappointed in the title: where's my wetware interface already?)
anigbrowl 17y ago
I can handle 1000 wpm but it gets very lumpy for me - I get the sense of what I'm reading OK but my brain is constantly going 'wait, what?' and I can't really think about what I'm reading. Plus I hate it :-) ~600 wpm seems most comfortable. I wonder if it should (or already does) slightly lengthen the time for longer words, as it does for words with a period; other punctuation pauses would be good too. The period pause helps comprehension a lot. It's really quite amazing that our brains can read that fast. It would be an interesting neurological comparison to know how this works for a non-alphabetical language like Chinese, too.
diiq 17y ago
The original RSVP, as I recall, had a car metaphor as the interface. An analog, infinitely variable accelerator would, I think, make this much more friendly --- in addition to the other remarks (combine short words, etc). If it simultaneously scrolled through a gently greyed-out version of the text, perhaps one could pause and review a more challenging excerpt before continuing at the higher speed?
sdp 17y ago
I gave it: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6130/6130-8.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6130/6130-8.txt And it gave me: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 47 bytes) in /var/www/vhosts/rickyspears.com/httpdocs/wwwzr/reader/index.php on line 68
jpd 17y ago
What makes this better than the previously released www.spreeder.com?
- unalone 17y ago
  Seconding the Spreeder recommendation. Smoother and better-looking and it looks like more customizable as well.
GrandMasterBirt 17y ago
regardless of the idea, its just like speed reading. You can get the information into your brain quick enough but it takes time to process and comprehend it. Speed reading denies you that processing capability so you "read" but you don't understand.
NEPatriot 17y ago
I think this would be better if you could copy/paste txt into it. Most of the time I only want certain portions of txt read. Def nice for stories/articles.

20 points by mildweed 17y ago

Info on the science behind this speed reading technology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Serial_Visual_Presentation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Serial_Visual_Presentatio...

tokenadult 17y ago
http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

AndrewWarner 17y ago

I wish this was integrated into instapaper and the iPhone Kindle.

radu_floricica 17y ago

Link is down, but if it's what I think, it's not really that useful. I played with something like that years ago, and more recently tried using it for reading on my phone, and the limitations are: 1) Compared to classic reading, you can't stop or go back easily. For some uses I suppose it's ok, but most times you want to pause during reading to think a bit about what you just read, or simply rest for a coupe of seconds, and this way you can't. 2) For mobile phones it's useful, but simply not as pleasant. I expected to get a headache which didn't materialize, but still didn't enjoy it as much.

jdunck 17y ago
On #1, that's a simple interface problem. What if you could tap to pause, swipe left to go back 5sec, swipe w/ 2 fingers to go back 15 seconds, &c? I've used RSVP a fair bit. It's not for pleasure reading. It's for very quickly deserializing info.

jrockway 17y ago

I don't read words all the same speed, but this application forces you to. Very. Monotonous. I have a vague sense of uneasiness related to robots reading me literature now...

mdoar 17y ago

Ran out of space when I tried it with a Project Gutenberg text. Also, seemed slower than advertised at the upper rates?

zasz 17y ago

This was incredibly painful to use. It seems to display both short words like "and" and "to" as long as it does longer words like "availability." I don't need to dwell as long as I do on short words as I do on longer words, and I expect most people would do the same thing. Also, the eye naturally likes to move around and pass over certain phrases and pause at others (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_in_language_reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_in_language_readin...). With this setup, you have to keep staring at the same spot. Interesting idea, but doesn't seem all that useful, particularly if you can already read quite quickly.

tigerthink 17y ago

The limiting reagent on my comprehension process is not the speed at which I can shove words through my eyes.

blhack 17y ago

A lot of you seem to not like this very much... While certainly not very useful for things like technical manuals or mathematics texts, for things like news articles, I love this. The threshold at which I have to actually remind myself to pay attention is about 450wpm...

s3graham 17y ago

Seems strange. I'm pretty sure I read clumps of words, not individual words when I'm going quickly. (also, disappointed in the title: where's my wetware interface already?)

anigbrowl 17y ago

I can handle 1000 wpm but it gets very lumpy for me - I get the sense of what I'm reading OK but my brain is constantly going 'wait, what?' and I can't really think about what I'm reading. Plus I hate it :-) ~600 wpm seems most comfortable. I wonder if it should (or already does) slightly lengthen the time for longer words, as it does for words with a period; other punctuation pauses would be good too. The period pause helps comprehension a lot. It's really quite amazing that our brains can read that fast. It would be an interesting neurological comparison to know how this works for a non-alphabetical language like Chinese, too.

diiq 17y ago

The original RSVP, as I recall, had a car metaphor as the interface. An analog, infinitely variable accelerator would, I think, make this much more friendly --- in addition to the other remarks (combine short words, etc). If it simultaneously scrolled through a gently greyed-out version of the text, perhaps one could pause and review a more challenging excerpt before continuing at the higher speed?

sdp 17y ago

I gave it: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6130/6130-8.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6130/6130-8.txt And it gave me: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 47 bytes) in /var/www/vhosts/rickyspears.com/httpdocs/wwwzr/reader/index.php on line 68

jpd 17y ago

What makes this better than the previously released www.spreeder.com?

unalone 17y ago
Seconding the Spreeder recommendation. Smoother and better-looking and it looks like more customizable as well.

GrandMasterBirt 17y ago

regardless of the idea, its just like speed reading. You can get the information into your brain quick enough but it takes time to process and comprehend it. Speed reading denies you that processing capability so you "read" but you don't understand.

NEPatriot 17y ago

I think this would be better if you could copy/paste txt into it. Most of the time I only want certain portions of txt read. Def nice for stories/articles.