
Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training - azov
http://www.spritzinc.com
======
lukev
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.

~~~
sgoody
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!

~~~
sergiosgc
My comfortable reading speed is a bit above 700wpm. On a book with proper line
length, or on my Kindle. Strangely, or not at all, I only read at that speed
when parsing non-fiction texts. Reading a novel, the reading times on my
Kindle boil down to 300wpm.

Some stuff needs to be savored, I guess. Even at that speed, I'm known for
devouring books, so I am probably reading too fast.

On a side note, if Spritz is that good, I'd like to try it out above my
comfort zone. Say, 1000wpm.

~~~
deckar01
I thought the same thing. Nothing a little JavaScript can't fix:

    
    
      // Insert drop down item.
      var li = document.createElement('li');
      li.innerHTML = '<a href="#">1000wpm</a>';
      li.setAttribute('data-value', '1000');
      document.querySelector('.speed ul').appendChild(li);
      
      // Create 1000wpm script
      var s = document.createElement('script');
      s.id = 'learntospritz_en_1000';
      s.type='spritztext';
      var data = JSON.parse(document.querySelector('#learntospritz_en_500').innerText);
      data[17] = '1000';
      s.innerText = JSON.stringify(data);
      document.body.appendChild(s);

------
fab13n
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.

------
tokenadult
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
How many second languages can you have?

~~~
chad_oliver
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
No, you can have only one second language, and then possibly third, fourth,
and so on.

~~~
gojomo
Not true in idiomatic English. Any language other than your 'first' can be
called a 'second language'. As a common example of this usage, courses to
learn English for non-native speakers are called "English as a Second Language
(ESL)" \- no matter how many other languages the students already know.

~~~
levosmetalo
Then I guess only native English speakers can have many "second" language. In
many other countries there are 1st foreign language and 2nd foreign language
classes in the school. And those books are called "English as a foreign
language" (Englisch als Fremdsprache).

------
devrelm
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
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
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
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
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
That's something I don't have the mindset to do. I would sooner drop a book
completely than just skip whole passages.

~~~
doorhammer
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.

~~~
shawn-furyan
Hah! I just finished Stranger in a Strange Land this weekend :)

It was my introduction to Heinlein. I'd avoided older scifi because I'd
wondered whether I would relate to it, and felt confirmed in that suspicion
with Stranger. It's not that I'm not glad that I read it, and if I consider
the context that it was written in circa the 1950s, then I can definitely
appreciate how radical it must have been. But to my sensibilities, it feels
tawdry and cheap, and thus insincere. It's in no way a fair criticism since it
seems to have been part of the zeitgeist that led to the free love of the 60s
and subsequent over-indulgence and exploitation of the 70s (and thus the
dominance of the idea that sex sells and so on). And from what I gather it was
rather sincere in so far as Heinlein was supremely interested in challenging
prevailing mores of the time. But outside of that context, to me, it feels,
again, cheap and tawdry, and just kind of stale.

~~~
doorhammer
No, I completely relate. I feel the same way reading it, and like you said,
it's not fair, but that doesn't really take away my general feeling about it.

It's the kind of book where I think I can intellectually appreciate it's
contribution and what it was in the context it was born out of, but I'm not
really super interested in reading more like it.

------
a3_nm
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
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
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...

------
rosser
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.

~~~
paulftw
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 :)

~~~
axman6
I'll keep this disclosure in mind when it comes across my desk. But now you've
got no chance of patenting it yourself, so touch luck =).

~~~
paulftw
All I wanted is take this patent out of the equation forever.

My thinking is that I've created prior art that would make the idea much much
harder to patent. Not a patent lawyer, so may be wrong.

As for how harmful it was for my anonymity to mention Sydney - well, NSA knows
way more than that. Besides, I could be sending you all down the wrong trail.
or better - confusing a ML algorithm.

------
mynameisfiber
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
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.

~~~
rahimnathwani
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...

~~~
kranner
Thanks!

Currently there isn't a way to do that without adjusting the number of words.
I've had other users complain about this though, so in the next update I'm
going to make the time slider free to move, and introduce a stepper to adjust
to the nearest 50wpm or something. This update has taken a while because I've
been working on Pocket/Instapaper support.

Originally the slider _was_ free to move; it was just too finicky to get down
to a round-figure WPM on the smaller devices so I added the 'ratchet'.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Wow! Pocket/Instapaper support. I'm really looking forward to that. About 1/4
of the articles I save are too wordy, and this will help me get through them
rather than leaving them for a day which never comes.

~~~
kranner
Same here. I realized that on some days the only reading I do is from my
Pocket queue.

------
bambax
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.

------
leephillips
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
By 'think' do you mean 'comprehend the text you're reading' in this context?

~~~
leephillips
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
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.

~~~
ISeemToBeAVerb
100% Agree.

Most informational books are packed with examples and context. Sometimes you
need that stuff, but other times you can get 90% of the information you need
just by reading the introduction, table of contents, and chapter conclusions.

I think it's important to understand your motivations for reading, and then
choose a method that best fits your intended goals.

Reading is like eating — sometimes you want to savor a book and other times
you want to grab and go.

------
kayoone
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
Looks like one of the founders is from Munich. Maybe he is just a little
trolly.

~~~
Argorak
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
_Learn how to spritz_

------
quarterto
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
I found the demo very impressive but I too have a large blue bar persisting in
my vision right now. Very peculiar.

~~~
millzlane
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.

------
buro9
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.

------
burkestar
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.

------
jotux
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)

------
syllogism
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...](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)

------
zhaphod
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.

~~~
Kiro
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
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
> 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
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.

~~~
Kiro
Just because it's normal to die of a cardiovascular disease it's good enough
and shouldn't be prevented?

------
Mizza
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
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/1c05121h154...](http://upload.amazingperformancestudio.com/image/1c05121h1545)

~~~
hadem
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!

------
danneu
I tried to make something similar while learning Javascript (ClojureScript).

[http://jsfiddle.net/P7c3s/](http://jsfiddle.net/P7c3s/)

~~~
minikomi
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
This Spritz thing seems to do that, which I found very comfortable.

------
vanniktech
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.

------
jjgreen
Speed reading is like speed sex, you're really missing the point.

~~~
corin_
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.

------
FailMore
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

------
agumonkey
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.

------
ntaso
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.

~~~
corin_
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"

------
Paul_S
"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
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.

------
xenophanes
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
_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
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
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.

------
qq66
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.

------
DaveGalt
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.

------
xenophanes
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.

~~~
axman6
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.

------
neilsharma
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.

------
angerman
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
And I think Amazon would like their customers to read more books, too...

------
tzs
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;
        }

~~~
gosub
my quick python version:

[https://gist.github.com/gosub/9206636](https://gist.github.com/gosub/9206636)

~~~
aaronsnoswell
Mocked this up in 30 mins this evening.

[http://pastebin.com/MyB0UUFD](http://pastebin.com/MyB0UUFD)

------
piato
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?

------
zwischenzug
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.

------
anarchitect
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
I'd wonder how much of that is just from being used to reading more
traditionally, though.

------
sireat
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.

------
arikrak
The basic issue with speed reading is that you can't read anything difficult
that way.

------
8note
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
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 !_

~~~
joss82
So true, the original French version was terrible. Impossible to understand,
even for a native.

Thanks for the better translation.

------
Pitarou
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.

------
johnwatson11218
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.

------
_kfb
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
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.

------
isawczuk
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..

------
benrhughes
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....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hughesoft.speedy)

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.

------
davidw
"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...](http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2008/09/17/the-spritz-from-austria-
to-venice-and-back)

My standing offer to take visitors out to sample a few in the piazza is always
open.

~~~
duiker101
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
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.

------
wordofchristian
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)"

------
X4
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.

------
littleq0903
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

------
atmosx
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).

------
drham
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

------
spark3k
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!

------
arvinsim
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.

------
berlingozzo
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! :))

------
pron
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.

------
teleclimber
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
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.

------
tels
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.

------
daikinaircon
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.

------
robinduckett
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
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.

------
DaveGalt
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.

------
keithnoizu
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.

------
DonGateley
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.

------
achalkley
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
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
@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.

------
matznerd
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.

------
Semiapies
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)

------
narrator
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.

------
oflordal
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.

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transfire
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.

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bmelton
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")

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DennisP
> 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'.

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huntergdavis
Couldn't help myself.
[http://www.hunterdavis.com/2014/02/25/okiu/](http://www.hunterdavis.com/2014/02/25/okiu/)

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djhworld
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

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ronaldx
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.

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ajimix
Javascript version:
[http://codepen.io/ajimix/full/zEdaL](http://codepen.io/ajimix/full/zEdaL)

~~~
utopkara
Looks great. Bookmarklet or chrome extension would be awesome!

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aquilax
This reminds me of ZAP Reader
[http://www.zapreader.spreeder.com/](http://www.zapreader.spreeder.com/)

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nodata
Java RSVP reader from years ago:
[http://trevor.smith.name/EST/](http://trevor.smith.name/EST/)

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nevster
Did anyone else 'View Source' so they could quickly scan the text that was
going to be displayed for all the other wpm values?

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polskibus
I wonder if prolonged exposition to sth like Spritz can trigger an epileptic
seizure? It sure blinks a lot while displaying words.

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vincentleeuwen
Interesting. I hope this works on boring stuff I don't really want to read.
Bye bye legal documents.

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frik
It works good for English, but it gets harder with languages like German with
longer words.

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Schiphol
The Spanish demo text is abysmal. Please get a native Spanish speaker to help
out.

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adamconroy
Alternative title : how to comprehend 0 concepts per minute without any
training

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gtani
poss. related: colored gradients
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784)

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littleq0903
command-line version:
[https://asciinema.org/a/7882](https://asciinema.org/a/7882)

pull request is welcome :D

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ybaumes
At 400wpm I began to skip most of words.. :-/

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Eleutheria
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.

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kimonos
Sounds very interesting!

