

Show HN: Artiklur, a new kind of speed reader - hudbuddy
http://artiklur.com/

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anigbrowl
This was too slow for me. I'm not sure what problem it solves, but maybe I'm
not the target market. The user interface was good and I thought it was
certainly superior to those speed readers that just flash up individual words
or phrases.

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hudbuddy
Apologies for this! I didn't realize until just now how intense this is on the
CPU. On slower machines the speed wasn't hitting its actual rate due to lag.

I lowered the word count per page and it seems to be running much better. The
scrolling feature also adds a performance hit that I did not know about, so I
have disabled that by default. Running at full capacity, the app should get up
to about 900-1000 WPM which is about 4* average adult reading speed. Sorry for
all the issues guys :( It's really cool when you get into it, I promise. I'll
continue to try to resolve issues as they come up!

~~~
anigbrowl
I found it a lot more comfortable once I got it up to 6-700wpm, though I'm not
sure I'd switch to it over reading the regular way - but I can see keeping it
bookmarked for when I encounter the occasional wall of text with no or few
paragraph breaks. I feel like I would prefer the text to slide rather than
page, having it all change at once is a bit disorienting and seems to be at
odds with the basic design concept. But it's early days and obviously you're
going to go through a bunch of iterations.

Anyway, I think it's the best speed-reading tool I've seen, and I'm usually
very negative about apps of this sort.

~~~
hudbuddy
Wow, that's impressive. I'm most comfortable around 300-400 :p I really
appreciate your feedback! And that's an honor to hear. I tried to make it very
customizable, and do find that sometimes I prefer the text not move at all
(achieved by unchecking 'Scroll Automatically'). I hope you'll continue to use
it, and I'll continue to improve it :)

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msvan
For texts that are suited for skimming, perhaps less interesting texts, I can
see tools like these being useful.

But I hope you're not reading novels this way. Increasing the speed might help
you finish more books, but to what end? Should books also be one of those
areas in life where we constantly have to perform and stay on top? If I read
Pride and Prejudice I'll do it for my own enjoyment, at whatever pace I like.
I kind of like that no one is timing my reading.

~~~
hudbuddy
I wholeheartedly agree. I chose those texts for their accessibility and simply
as a demonstration.

~~~
hudbuddy
That said, I would encourage folks to try it on stimulating pieces as well.
It's great for keeping your mind focused. And as I state somewhere in the
site, with all of the options I've built in, there really is no pressure to
read quickly.

This despite the fact that it can certainly be used for speed reading as well.

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mitchmindtree
The text I was reading scrolled off the top of the page as I was reading it.
Also, I found the scrolling kind of distracting. Though perhaps it's not meant
to scroll so fast at all?

Edit: This was on the latest Chrome, on MacOS10.9.2 btw.

~~~
hudbuddy
Ah, this is a bug I thought I had fixed. (I don't have the resources to test
on Safari unfortunately.) The text is supposed to remain almost stagnant on
the page while the text scrolls to keep it in place. If you disable automatic
scrolling it can function normally though.

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carrotleads
The format solves the problem of wanting to reread a previous sentence.

One of the main problem with speed readers is it can't handle user pauses. I
may want to ponder on a point but speed readers can't pause. May be a eye
tracking system can help but then how do you handle someone wanting to reread
a passage. Maybe some other gestures are needed or go the KB/mouse/swipe
interaction way.

The problem with your format is also that it takes space while spreeder app
displays only a single word but has the problems I mentioned above.

~~~
hudbuddy
I actually created this app just for myself initially to solve that exact
problem. If you left click while you are reading, the text will come to a
halt, allowing you to catch up. There are many other shortcuts like this,
highlighted at [http://artiklur.com/Shortcuts](http://artiklur.com/Shortcuts)

~~~
carrotleads
if you add user interaction then the spreeder app concept itself can be
optimised.

The way you get to read fast is because your eyes don't have to scan text and
can focus on one area. With your app, your eyes move around and that slows
down the reading to the extent that you ask why bother.

Speed readers IMO are useful to scan through documents and ideally targeted at
those functions.

~~~
hudbuddy
I would contest this. Scanning our eyes and being able to look back to
previous words as we read is an important part of comprehension and is
something that physically cannot be done with an app like spreeder.

Not mention, scanning words is much more natural for me!

~~~
carrotleads
Yes. Scanning is needed but not for all use cases.

If you add user interaction, then spreeder could add a sideways pop up widget
that showed the whole paragraph with highlighted word. That solves the problem
of reading quick as well as pausing and scanning back.

My concern was that your app didn't help me read quick. Maybe it was the
issues you mentioned. Are you sure you can read it quick if the app is
optimised?

~~~
hudbuddy
I've been a horribly slow reader my whole life, but more than that I'm just
easily distracted. I find with Artiklur i can read at about 400wpm average for
20+ minutes with equal comprehension.

I really encourage you to give it a try (I think I've fixed the issues--just
make sure auto scrolling is off if it doesn't work on your device). I'm not
trying to sell anything here, I just took the time to clean it up so other
people could try it too. I really love it.

Also, very interesting point about spreeder. I'm not sure it would feel the
same, but i'd like to see it

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chazu
I dig it, I'm going to give the bookmarklet a go. I appreciate the keybinding
of space bar to pause, thats a big pain in the tookas with RSVP apps, i find.
Adding simple keybindings for increasing and decreasing speed on the fly would
be killer, as I found myself fiddling back and forth with the mouse until I
found a comfortable speed.

~~~
hudbuddy
WASD for increasing speed and turning pages :)
[http://artiklur.com/Shortcuts](http://artiklur.com/Shortcuts) for the full
list of keybindings

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jayrye
At first I found the text scrolling to be distracting, so I turned it off.
Then I tried turing on text masking. Frankly the whole process seems to be
distracting because that did not help either. Unhiding the text just causes my
eyes to jump around rather then focus on the text i'm reading.

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databoy
Can't believe nobody has mentioned Spritz.
[http://www.spritzinc.com/](http://www.spritzinc.com/)

Try it out. You're welcome.

~~~
hudbuddy
I mention Spritz in the website
[http://artiklur.com/About](http://artiklur.com/About)

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owenversteeg
It looks cool but please please please add a number to the "Speed" slider.
There's currently no way to tell how many WPM I'm reading at.

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valkia1
It really seems to help focus attention. It would be interesting to do some
research on this and see if reading retention improves (as well as speed).

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chrismorgan
On Firefox for Android on a tablet, this site is pretty broken.

~~~
chrismorgan
Seems to be fairly broken on Firefox (Nightly, at least) too, though in
somewhat different ways.

~~~
hudbuddy
I'm curious what your issues look like. I've tested it on all I can (IE10+,
Firefox latest, Chrome latest, Droid Chrome and iPhone Safari), and all seem
to work quite well. The scrolling feature does get hairy on slower devices due
to hardware limitations.

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tlarkworthy
don't understand. I pasted some text. Then pressed play. A couple of words
were highlighted (out of 20ish) before the remaining darkened text flew off
the page.

