What is Reddit's opinion of
Spritz?
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➔ Spritz website
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89 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Yes. It's called sub-vocalization and there are several methods out there but don't wait until you are older to start. If you are in high-school, Start Now! It will be easier than trying to do it as an older adult (I know... I'm still trying).
Also check out Spritz this technology looks real promising and they are looking for developers. If some of you are there are good at that - and I know you're out there, take at look.
Note: I am in no way associated with spritz, just a dude who would love to be able to read faster.
It really depends on how fast you go, at 350/400 wpm I can read, assimilate and comprehend what I read. To say the truth, I even comprehend it better because my mind tends to wander off, then I get tired, I forget what I read last paragraph and so on. I feel my brain actually working, like there's a stimuli and it's awesome.
I top out at about 800 wpm.
I can read a page of dense legal text in about two minutes and a page from, say, a trashy paperback in about 20 seconds. I have pretty good short-term retention, even at top speed, but I have to slow down and interact with the text (take notes, etc.) if it's something I need to remember. It is nice for scanning documents for particular points of interest, though.
If you want to see what that's like, this gives a pretty good approximation, and goes up to 700wpm.
Not an app yet, still in prerelease but...
Lets you comfortably read at 2-3 times your normal reading speed through some clever sequential display technology. Try out the tech demo on their website, and I think you can email to apply for beta access.
Many speed-reading apps work by only showing you 1-3 words at a time, in the centre of the screen (example). It's not optimal for all purposes of digital documents, only for reading something new faster, but it's one area where digital can beat paper.
This is really helpful. I'm lucky if I can get through six lines of text before wandering off. I found spritz really helpful too and their "spritzlet" application lets you read nearly any webpage with their method. It's pretty hip.
Beeline looks great too. I'm going to use them both. Thanks for posting this!
Edit: Gilded? HFS, how awesome! Thanks!
It's going to be interesting watching this play out. Spritz claims three years of R&D, patent-pending, wants people to license it. Meanwhile people are replicating at least most of its design in a matter of days.
I know which I would use, given this tidbit from their FAQ:
> 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.
How Spritz do it:-
switch (word.length) { case 0: case 1: pivot = 0; break; case 2: case 3: case 4: case 5: pivot = 1; break; case 6: case 7: case 8: case 9: pivot = 2; break; case 10: case 11: case 12: case 13: pivot = 3; break; default: pivot = 4; };
(findBestLetter in http://www.spritzinc.com/wp-content/themes/spritz/js/SpritzDisplay.js)
I'll have to respectfully disagree. This ad is based off of Spritz speed reading technology, which has made the front page of Reddit several times, is default setting on Huffington Post, as well as been featured in numerous publications. Someone saw the idea and linked it to Honda. I really think that it has a pretty wide appeal.
This is a fake version of http://www.spritzinc.com
I believe apps that want to use the actual Spritz method need to license it. This is just some guy's interpretation. There's actually science behind the word placement and highlighted letter in the actual Spritz version.
I've always been a pretty fast reader but it kind of just came natural to me. If I think about it, I kind of expect the information that's going to be featured on the page and I skip to those parts/words.
Had a class on reading with a professor that studies the subject and she emphasized good lightning, being rested and bigger fonts are better (that's why I really like using a Kindle to read - you can adjust font size).
Also, this is kind of interesting: http://www.spritzinc.com/
I'm not a big fan of reading either. I want the knowledge, but the medium is so time consuming! As a result I've read a total of 1 fiction book in the last 12 years (when high school stopped forcing me).
The way I do it (not to say it will work for everyone) is to turn it into part of my daily routine. Just like I have to get myself out of bed, brush my teeth and cook my food, I have to read at least 20 pages of my book.
Sometimes I'll miss a day, but if I miss too many and it falls out of my routine then it just stops happening altogether until I force myself back into it, so I try to avoid that. Ultimately 20 pages doesn't take that long and you'll find that you get through books at a pretty good pace.
You could go even faster using a speed reading app (which works like this), but personally I find it difficult to follow the more complex ideas using these, so only use it sometimes on easier texts.
As the other poster suggested, the alternative is audiobooks. Librivox has a free library, although its collection of socialist literature is limited. Audible and other pay sites will probably have better collections if you don't mind spending the cash.
However, I will say that, like the speed reader app, I find it all but impossible to follow complex ideas in audio format. Personally I need that ability to go back and spend some time unpacking the important sentences. It works well for history though.
Brown is a pedantic prick. And he's wrong about the "flaw" thing - it's actually a result of the brain assembling an image based on imperfect vision. Your eyes cannot focus on everything at once so your brain assembles the rest based on what it does see. Without this ability we would have large blank spots instead of a full frame of view.
Another result of this so-called flaw is that we can register an entire word without actually having to focus on each letter, allowing us to read faster. The brain can comprehend words incredibly fast but is limited by our eyesight. If we were to look at every single letter we would read very slow. See the following link to understand how fast your brain can understand words when you are not limited to conventional text placement - http://www.spritzinc.com/about/
Pretty cool stuff there. Claims to make you read up to 500wpm. I tried it out, and honestly it seems to work pretty well. Not sure if I'd read an entire book in this fashion, but very cool nonetheless.
One of the techniques to speed read involves reducing the enormous amount of time spent moving your eyes while reading by learning to read multiple words or even whole lines of text between eye movements.
Another technique involves moving the text rather than the eye. If you mix both techniques you can get absurd words per minute.
You can kinda test this out if you remember how many wpm you had with the staples test and then going to an even higher amount http://www.spritzinc.com/. It really does help you read faster.
The text for 550wpm actually discusses how using multiple words doesn't work, at least for Spritz anyways.
I'm the same way. And I often have to re-read a paragraph because not a single word sunk in. Have you ever tried the spritz speed reading thing? I can keep up in the demos, but never tried comprehension with it. Might have to try.
Cis White Males unite!
You can train to read words without saying them in your head but still picking up the meanings, the time taken for the brain to turn the words into sounds is the limiting factor. Also a lot of time is spent scanning your eyes to find each word. http://www.spritzinc.com/ helps you read faster by taking away this overhead, which in turn forces your brain to interpret words directly rather than saying them in your head first, which after some time can be retained when reading normally.
They don't. You avoid that by using Spritz. That's really the whole point of this method, that you don't have to waste a bunch of time moving your eyes because they move the words to their optimal place instead. That's kind of like saying that a flaw with the sewing machine is that you'll only be able to sew faster if you use it.
>We focus on taking out all of the large scale eye movements, the ones from word to word and sentence to sentence that are, by far, the most time-consuming part of reading out of the game.
From what I've gathered it uses the optimal recognition point of the word, which helps speed the reading. "When reading, only around 20% of your time is spent processing content. The remaining 80% is spent physically moving your eyes from word to word and scanning for the next ORP"
I struggle with this as well, and am in my last year of getting my B.A. I get a lot of "try audio books" or "cover part of the page and read a segment at a time" or "follow along with your index finger!" (that last one came from a mom of a 7-year-old.)
I personally have not found anything that is yet on the market that really has helped for more than a paragraph at a time. I find that on the computer, if I can zoom in, I tend to keep better track of what I'm reading, and if I lose my spot, I know it's somewhere on the screen. I also am really hoping/impatiently waiting for Spritz to become more available, since that has been the first thing to give me legitimate hope.
If it does help that people read to you, maybe you can find an inexpensive (or free!) screen reader that many visually impaired people use. I believe NVDA is free, and it's at least one less person you have to rely on, especially if you're up for a late-night study session.
I really wish I could help more, but even my psychiatrist wasn't really sure what to do after audio books failed for me. Good luck!
Oh that sounds really neat, this isn't the same idea as your research but have you heard of this http://www.spritzinc.com ... its an app for iWatches or any small device that reads emails that uses data that figured out which letters the eye reads first and uses that information to help the reader read their emails faster with limited space. I doubt its the same process, but might be interesting to you. Thank you so much for your input, I am scared mainly about money and not having enough time to do research, but there really is--like you've said--no other way to really figure out what you want to do. So thanks!
This might not be what you are looking for since it only helps digitally. But Spritz is a crazy app that you can read ebooks and websites with. It flashes the words in front of you at whatever speed you pick and is incredibly easy to read.
This might not be what you are looking for since it only helps digitally. But Spritz is a crazy all that you can read ebooks and websites with. It flashes the words in front of you at whatever speed you pick and is incredibly easy to read.
Its actually a cool techinque where they flash words quickly but because your eyes arent moving you can focus on what your reading easier. Its pretty cool.
http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/speed-reading-technology-read-90-minutes/story?id=22819573
Thanks ! You're talking about the tools/technology like Sprtiz ?
Or the 7SpeedReading software ?
(I have tried Spritz, especially a chrome extension using the exact same principal and I do find it cool... but I find my comprehension isn't perfect, like I feel I have to re-think very quickly about what I just read at every sentence. And even I can moderately keep up, I feel for complicated scientific text for example, I miss the traditional text where I can see paragraphs and go back a few lines if I want. So is it really possible to learn to speed-read traditional text, and achieve a speed of around 700 or 800wpm just reading a paper magazine ?)
I like to spend a few minutes using Spritz on an article at high speed just to get into the right state of mind. It helps me to maintain speed without stopping on words when I'm reading normally. Being aware of how much time I spend on a page is also essential.
For information retention - and this is wierd - I do use a combination of chain-linking points in a memory palace and writing down notes into Anki (a flashcard app) to remember everything I find useful. Since I started doing that in early December, I've memorized about 500 points of information, all related to self-improvement. Revising those points mentally has a profound effect in that it puts you back into that productive state of mind you were in when you first came across that point. There's really nothing quite like a memory palace, as ridiculous as it sounds at first - it's literally the only way to create something without moving a muscle. It's gotten to the point that it feels like a second reality for me.
Also, Anthony Metivier has a great podcast on memory techniques.
Yes! Some of it is commissioned by us while others are published by our detractors. I personally object to the detracting study on the basis that they eliminated regressions, saying it affects comprehension negatively, while our software allows for backtracking.
There are several other ongoing studies being done on Spritz as well, but papers have yet to be published as far as I know.
you seem to enjoy what technology can do for reading. Check out this company that is trying to change the way people read. (try the demo on the front page of their website) I can't wait til this tech goes more mainstream. It is like speed-reading automatically without a learning curve. And comprehension increases as speed does.
> Spritz I'm glad you posted that. It seems like OP has tried audiobooks so maybe speed-reading software may make books seem worth their time. I have yet to read an entire book with Spritz, but something tells me it shouldn't inhibit comprehension once any reader gets the hang of it. Link - http://www.spritzinc.com/
It's also possible to train yourself to read without using that voice in your head. This is how speed readers do it. I stumbled upon a good website that does a great job explaining how to speed read. You can check it out here: http://www.spritzinc.com/
I had a huge conversation with my younger brother about subvocalization; we are both able to absorb large chunks (paragraphs) of text without subvocalizing. We were wondering why we are able to look at a page and near-instantly understand everything written on it when so many of our peers can't. Even using http://www.spritzinc.com/ at the highest settings bothers us because it slows us down by making us read word-for-word.
We came to the conclusion that it's because we have been playing musical instruments since we were very young (4 years of age) and that trains your mind to constantly look a few measures ahead....you "read" the sheet music lines ahead while your fingers are playing something you "read" earlier.
We also read. A LOT, and all the time. I can read the last Harry Potter book in a few hours....but speed like that comes with time and practice.
If the gaze tracking sees where you end up looking after the saccade it might be able to expand around that point. It would have to be very low latency, but you can get away with doing some rather odd things with the human visual system.
Spritz is quite an interesting technology that lets you read faster by only displaying a word at a time. See http://www.spritzinc.com/
There's this really cool speed reading software called Spritz. I believe they have started rolling out a JavaScript SDK that you could try to work with. You have to fill out an application and be approved and it's targeted towards people who will develop software from it, but that's something I'm interested in doing. If I get approved we could implement this into the website somehow. If not, whenever it's released for public use we could use it. It's really need and will cut down the reading time for viewers substantially. Just a neat little thing I wanted to share.
Spritz, saw this in another thread and i want everyone to know what it is. Basicly, it allows you to read very fast on your phone by making you focus on one place and then changing the letters. Go check it out! Spritz
If we can read up to 1000 words per minute, then why does Spritz only go up to 700WPM? I did 700 just fine, where is 1000?
It seems robotic because you read some words faster or slower than the delay which makes the spacing seem odd, hence robotic.
I don't claim to be a good speedreader but when I want to I look at 2 lines of the page at a time and go left to right with my eyes to let my brain identify key words and develop the thought that the sentence is conveying. This is nice that I don't have to act like I am watching a ping pong match to comprehend.
EDIT: So here's what I found out by testing the FAQ page vs spritzing it. http://www.spritzinc.com/faq/
1: This is going to slow you down when you are browsing web pages, I normally hop from line to line based on interest. When I'm not interested I'll speed read till it catches my attention. Spritz makes you go through everything & NO IMAGES
2: Any word that you do not know fluently will interrupt your spritzing, this extends to when spritz decided to break up goofy (hyphens and parenthesis notes). Also email addresses, hash tags, odd characters screwed with the comprehenshion. (Again bad for webpage/ blog reading)
3: You will get near sighted focus very fast from all the words flying by at the same spot and depth. Way faster than reading a book, (and something that never happens when I am web browsing)
TL:DR Spritz should work well for books at your reading level and below when you are a native speaker of the language. Web Pages, Blogs, high reading level books all suck to read fast. Once you stop sub vocalizing this might be a cool app to read current best sellers.
Hi there,
you are missing the point of how Spritz is working (-:
Maybe you could have a look at their blog and integrate this method into one of your future updates. Blog
Thanks for your work!
If you enjoy this you should take a look at spritzinc. I just discovered them yesterday but really love it already. Too bad it's a licensing application. But I dream of being able to use my instapaper account with spritz....
Edit: formatting
Their work is specifically on adressing those problems, they even have a page on their site dedicated to it, The Science. They seem to have done quite some work on adressing at least the first of the problems you mentioned.
found this picture: http://www.spritzinc.com/wp-content/themes/spritz/assets/img/devices.jpg
"the first touchscreen to recognize fingerprints"
but then again I guess we'll find out in less than 12 hours...
EDIT: Sorry, I was wrong. It was from a news article: http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/biometric-first-touchscreen-recognizes-fingerprints-130719.htm
Still could be a hint though.
EDIT: also this is a stretch but the way the app works is using algorithms to know how long to display a word. There were rumors of optical sensors in the s5, so an app like this would complement that so much. Again, a stretch, but feasible.
Ci sono molti modi di sfruttare Spritz, personalmente utilizzo il loro bookmarklet: ad esempio, se voglio leggere questo articolo del Post sulla vicenda Volkswagen clicco sul bookmarklet e il box di lettura parte automaticamente. Posso anche selezionare una parte della pagina che desidero leggere e cliccare sul bookmarklet per "spritzare" (?) solo quella.
This is really fantastic, great job, spooky!
I also read it with this, http://www.spritzinc.com/ This was meant as a compliment, dont be sidetracked from how cool this is, by this thing, oh golden rings now my comment seems worse
Ever since reading about this technology I've been looking for something free to get my hands on. Just the other month I found this. It basically shows you the words one at a time but speeds through them (one letter is red, I believe so that your eyes ignore it since your brain can figure out the word without it 9/10 times) You can control the speed so you can get progressively faster. The average reading speed is around 250 and I'm currently at 320 http://www.spritzinc.com/
If it is internet articles or anything on a computer you could try something like Spritz speed reader Its an online tool that you highlight on a page what you want to read, and it plays it one word at a time at whatever speed you feel comfortable at. If you do it one paragraph or page at a time, you can try and say a summary of what you have just read.
http://www.spritzinc.com/ this is what i use. Possibly the best one out there. reduces the time taken to read something almost by 75% depending on the speed you choose.(I finished Dance With Dragons in about 3 hours)
There's a proof too that says someone can understand what they are reading of up to 450 words per minute. The biggest factor that slows you down is that the words are not centered and that you are moving your eyes across the page and that slows it down even more. I believe the proof was done in regards to this new tool:
Gotcha. Not sure if you wanted advice on that, but if you did, have you heard about sub-vocalization? It's basically that people tend to vocalize the words they read either by whispering or by "saying" it in their heads. Because people speak much slower than they can read, it slows down the reading process. Turning off that little habit takes a lot of practice. To be honest, I still do it sometimes. But I've gotten much better at 1) absorbing larger chunks of text at a time, whether this is looking at a couple lines at once, 2) reading and getting the meaning from the word without any vocalization.
You can try speed reading apps and gradually increase your speed so that you don't have time to sub-vocalize.
Of course, I don't actually speed read books I enjoy. I mainly speed read loooong academic texts for class or something. But the techniques apply to just make your overall reading experience smoother, even if you don't read at "max" capacity (I could probably read at 700 wpm and have ok retention, but I probably read closer to 300-400 wpm, whereas 200 is I think average or something, though the average is skewed left).
Sorry that was a bunch of text to dump on you, but it's something I think about because I have attention issues, so finding ways to read efficiently was a huuuge concern for me after like middle school.
Would you be interested in reading more about the object itself. Those books are full-on about an abusive relationship and seeing it as acceptable and even romantic just because they paid for something. http://www.spritzinc.com/. And you have ignored ever single time.
If you want to try again in an easy way, I recommend going to http://www.spritzinc.com and trying the example on their site, slowly increasing the speed. You can go up to 700 words per minute, which is probably way faster than an inner voice can keep up with. If I remember corrently, according to the website it apparently increased reading comprehension too.
Try not to think about the words when you see them, just relax and let them come to you :)
I don't hear an inner voice when reading usually, and I think Spritz can probably help a lot with learning this. The way Spritz works is a little different from the way I read, but I imagine it's just as effective at silencing an inner voice. When I read a book the way it works is usually me seeing a couple of words or whole sentences at once, and those just create the images in my head. It's not even images per se, I can't really describe it.. it's more like concepts settling in my head.
Have you tried any of the reader apps or programs that present one word at a time at a specified speed? They are meant for speed reading and retention, but can help getting through big chunks of text as well.
ETA: Here's one of them. Spritz
Too many words is most likely the deterrent. This has probably never been done before, but you could use Spritz instead of the traditional way to make them read it. You've probably never heard of Spritz before, so here's the link: http://www.spritzinc.com/
Not sure how hard it is to do this; sorry if it's stupid and impractical.
I don't know if I will ever experience it again, and it has been a long time since I have.
I used to work a job that would bore me half to death. I would sit watching a door for hours and hours without any type of outlet. Those were the times I would notice it.
Woosh! It would feel like waking up, except I was still sitting exactly as I was a second ago. It felt like I had forgotten something, like when you have a lapse of judgement while driving (like forgetting to check your mirrors before a lane change) and have a brief moment of panic at your loss of concentration. However these were more confusing.
I think it might be similar to a certain way that my brain shuts down with certain status quo. I have a reading app on my phone which quickly switches from word to word similar to this http://www.spritzinc.com/
When I look at that for a moderate length of time, the world around me disappears from vision, and only the changing words remain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_adaptation#Visual
It is a form of neural adaptation. When I look away from the screen, the world suddenly jumps out at me! It was always there, but I was not seeing it.
When I experience this mental "flicker" It is like looking away from my phone screen and having the world jump out at me, except it is more confusing. It always feels like I forgot something. I guess it could perhaps be a more thorough neural adaptation across more forms of sensory input due to the lack of stimulation that job caused.
But I have also experienced it when I would read books, or play games at work. So I don't really know.
Interestingly, I went to their website(http://www.spritzinc.com/) and upped it to 700 words, at that speed I got the message but for some reason my mind was flipping the order of words for example the phrase "The Spritz Team" appeared at the end, and I comprehended "The" and "Team" before I comprehended the word "Spritz". I think this would be great for news articles and other stuff with simple words but I think there is too much of a delay with more abnormal words for my brain to absorb it just right.
On their website, you can actually try different speeds, I find that the subvocalizing choppiness decreases enough to read rather comfortably at higher speeds (500 wpm and up). 700 wpm is actually surprisingly tolerable!
it's just one of the things they teach you when you learn speed reading. this lets you sort of read many words at the same time. so if you imagine yourself reading really fast you hear 1 word at a time, but imagine now instead of hearing 1 word at a time when you read you're understanding 4 or 5 words at once.
it's not the only technique to speed read though. you can still vocalize and read incredibly fast.
like with this technique http://www.spritzinc.com/test/#/
It's not an issue, but you can potentially read faster if you don't vocalize. You can only "speak" so quickly, but you can absorb the information faster than that without the sounds.
Here's an example: http://www.spritzinc.com/test/
Also squirt.io is a webapp that will turn any page into what spritz does.
Definitely although it's probably not very fast compared to other people. In the end, reading slowly helps me process the information more thoroughly which is what I want so I don't mind.
If you want to increase your reading speed, have a look at Spritz (http://www.spritzinc.com/). I don't use it personally but it could be helpful.
This is super awesome OP! Thank you for sharing. I don't know if you have heard of Spritzel before but it is a tool to help you read faster. I use it often to read stories on /r/WritingPrompts and /r/HFY it might be interesting to include it in to your application too.
Have you ever heard of the web application called Spritz? Words are displayed one by one with one letter colored in red. They say it accelerates reading. There is a demo on their frontpage: http://www.spritzinc.com/
You might be interested in this: http://www.spritzinc.com/
First time I tried the demo I went at the highest speed just because I could, and guess what, I could understand it perfectly! It's a great mechanism that greatly improves reading speed thanks to modern technology.
Learn to scan read (or what ever you want to call it), so that you can get a grip on the important points without spending ages reading every word. Googling speed reading and read some tips etc would be a good start.
Also, Spritz is a cool app that may help depending on the format of your reading, most of mine was/is available as a pdf and so I can copy text into this to read it super fast.
Edit: Link fixed.
Das Hauptprinzip ist einfach, aber sehr effektiv: auf einer Bildschirm erscheint nur ein Wort, seiner Mitte ist durch besonderer Farbe hervorgehoben für schneller Fokussierung Blick. Entwicklern bieten auf ihrer Webseite, diese neue Art des Lesens zu versuchen und sich mit eigenen Augen vom postiven Effekt zu überzeugen. Lesegeschwindigkeit von 500 Wörter pro Minute kriegt man fast sofort - ohne systematischer Vorbereitung und dauernder Gewöhnung. Die Gesellschaft meldet, dass der Potential bis zu 1000 Wörter pro Minute ist. Zum Vergleich - die durschnittliche Lesegeschwindigkeit beträgt nach verschiedenen Schätzungen etwa 200 pro Minute.
I average around 60-90 seconds per page. I'm not sure what the average is, but I feel like it's a little slow and I've always tried to pick up the pace, but then it feels more like me racing against the clock instead of relaxing and enjoying a story.
There's this really interesting app called Spritz that focuses on speed reading. Without sounding like I'm an employee, it actually sort of worked when I tested it out, but I personally hate e-books so it's not something I could see myself using a lot.
If you want to read fast you have to kill your internal voice. There are lots of studies and things to help you achieve this online. This was recommended by a co-worked a few weeks ago.
I don't think my wpm capacity increased substantially in the past 3 years or so. I'm capable of reading at 700wpm when I'm making a concentrated, deliberate effort to read the text quickly while still going over every sentence (i.e. not bullshitting), but it is more straining and I don't usually do it unless I actually need to. For the record, this is considered a 'fast' speed but it's not ridiculously out of the norm. I did drastically improve my skimming ability over the years though, especially in domain-specific stuff that I'm familiar with, and I think this is related to the amount of stuff I read (because I can fill in the blanks more easily, etc).
I think (and this is just my own semi-educated guess) the 'non-vocal' reading strategies are usually a variant of skimming strategies. For example, it's usually possible to get the gist of a text by only reading the first and last few words of sentences, or skipping a few sentences, and guessing the blanks (the 'guessing' would be the post-processing). This makes it hard to have a continuous or pronounced inner voice.
Something I forgot to mention earlier. One of the reasons people think subvocalization is detrimental to reading speed is that 'the brain can't speak as fast as it can see' or something like that. This site/app might not be all it's cracked up to be but it does prove that subvocalization can become very fast with a little to no practice (try getting to the 700wpm speed).
Just curious if Grey has seen Spritz yet? It is a far more efficient way of reading, and it would break his Kindle chains.
Also, Spritzify is a free Chrome extension that does this to any text.
Thanks for the clarification, this information makes sense why this technology allows one to read incredibly fast. However, if the 'eye-movement bottleneck' was overcome, thinking still has an incredible advantage for speed in regards to the number of synaptic relays that must be crossed to have the information arrive into perception.
For PDFs I'm playing around with Spritz technology. Take a look here: http://www.spritzinc.com Spritz is a technology that, as I understand, is platform independent.
You can find an interview with the founders on Charlie Rose that's pretty interesting: http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2014-06-04/speed-reading-technology-charlie-rose-06-04
I've only been using it for a few weeks (on and off) and find my comfort zone to be around 550 to 600 WPM. It's as though the ideas of authors are being 'downloaded' into my mind.
Great for PDFs but epub isn't compatible with the reader that I have as far as I know.
>Hello there Reddit >I am 16 and in my spare time I developed Shifty Spritz, a completely free Chrome extension for speed reading. > >Recently I came across a new technology called Spritz which is a leading edge speed reader that allowed me to read so much faster. I loved the idea but I had no use for the products they and other people were offering so I decided to whip up my own speed reader so I could read things like long Reddit comments and Wikipedia pages in a flash. I created a my own implementation of Spritz as a Chrome extension that allowed me to read the things I wanted quickly. If you are interested in saving time reading on the internet and want to get more info on it then visit Shifty Spritz. > >Firefox support will come shortly! >Thanks I really hope this benefits you! > >Edit: reworded a sentence >Edit: thanks for all the love and for Reddit Gold
Velocity is an app I came across yesterday, since I was interested in speed reading apps after checking out Spritz which was posted on Reddit a while back. Velocity is one of the most useful things I've come across in quite a while.
It flashes one word at a time, and that makes it possible to read at much higher speeds than you normally would. I'm sure I could read an entire novel on a screen the size of a wrist watch this way.
Actually, they have up to 700WPM setting on their page: http://www.spritzinc.com/#
And I found it instantly readable. Pretty dang amazing, I think I may try " reading" a novel like that at some point.
Where did you get that idea? According to the Spritz website the app is specifically designed to deliver content, streaming information faster to the user because it doesn't require eye movement.
Sounds pretty similar to what I did: http://austingwalters.com/maximizing-learning-how-audiobooks-can-change-your-life/
Except with audiobooks. However, I would argue 500 wpm (http://www.spritzinc.com/faq/) would be a bit much for the average user. I know it's possible to read that fast, but often comprehension/pleasure diminishes, so most people wont use it anywhere near that speed.
Further, understanding is not the same as enjoying, I took several speed reading courses and basically I can read super fast (usually around 430 wpm), but you only search for key terms and often will scan 2 to 3 lines at a time. if this app offered 2 - 3 lines at a time, maybe it would be good for speed reading, but I still question it because it would diminish your ability to skip unneeded sections.
It will be cool to see what happens with this. I probably read around your speed, I like to enjoy the book, however I found that I could follow along really well with Spritz at 600 wpm.
I didn't think so either but I started using a speed reader and it really worked for me. check this out for an example.
No. Ever wonder how deaf people read? They don't have that voice in their head. The voice is called sub-vocalization.
I know this because I spent a half an hour on this site.
Also try squirt.io.
http://www.spritzinc.com/ <---- Read faster than the entire population of earth. (Except people with that photographic memory thing)
Edit: Also you do not have to learn anything new, your brain is already wired to read at massive speeds.
A lot of time spent reading is actually physically moving your eyes from word to word. Since the .gif is in one spot on the screen, you don't have to move your eyes very far. You don't have to put in as much energy into moving your eyes and therefore, can use more energy to process reading and comprehending the next word. It's pretty cool.
Spritz looks to be a pretty cool idea.
To a certain point, when your eyes reach a >15° angle they'll start to strain, and then you're either going to adjust the angle of your head, or the position of the book. Most of the time you don't even think about the fact that you're doing it, but why do you think it's so much faster to read when you're staring at the same point all the time?
Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you offering things that do roughly the same thing: Spritz is an application that teaches you to read faster. Squirt is similar to Spritz, but is a Chrome extension/bookmark. Essentially, you bookmark Squirt and highlight text on the page you want to speed read. Then, you click your bookmark for Squirt and it launches the application.
Free alternatives!
The difference is that Spreeder doesn't highlight the "focus letter" (I don't remember the exact term) in the way that Spritz and Squirt (who are using Spritz's patents) do. This allows for even speedier reading because you don't need to move your eyes.
At a glance, this looks like it fails to place the optimal recognition point as well as spritz does. I find myself having to move my eyes fairly often, which hardly happens at all with the examples from spritz.
Apparently this app claims to move along your reading speed to the point where you won't have time to "sub vocalize" (their term for internal monologue) your reading. I'm curious how it would work for a visualizer.
Does it break up long words like the Spritz FAQ describes?
> When your eye recognizes a word longer than that, it naturally jumps to the right of those first 13 characters while processing the first part of the word as it jumps. In reality, a long word requires your eye to break it into multiple pieces and that is how your brain stores it. We analyze each word and break them up based on this standard and show you long words in multiple pieces, just like your brain is expecting them.
That is weird. I picked that thinking there was probably an optimal word length that above which, it would take longer to process and then thinking '8 just sounds about right'
Just now, looking at Spritz's site, I see they came to the same conclusion and are doing exactly what you will be doing. I swear I didn't see it before reading your comment
Here's the link: http://www.spritzinc.com/blog/
Go to the section titled "Why Spritz Works (II): The Rhythm of Reading" and the paragraph starting with "Spritz takes into account that different words require different processing times"
I don't know if it's a gimmick or not, but Spritz seems to work better for me than spreeder. I hope yours turns out even better.
"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. Here is to get you to stop saying every word in your head as you read it: Try lightly humming to yourself while you are spritzing. Not too loud, mind you. That would be weird. Hum just loud enough that only you can hear yourself. If you’re humming, you can’t be talking to yourself. Problem solved. After a little practice, you will stop subvocalizing, which also helps your traditional reading speed."
source: http://www.spritzinc.com/faq/#
At first I didn't really know why you'd get tunnel vision from such a short demo, but then I realised on this page http://www.spritzinc.com/blog/ they have a 'Spritz it' option. Half way through the tunnel vision became obvious enough to me that I decided to break off and just refocus myself, at 500wpm I missed a few sentences during that break lol.
Most people do actually. Spritz actually suggests a technique to stop the mental aloud reading which they state can hinder achieving faster reading speeds. They suggest humming quietly. It's addressed in their FAQ.