
Show HN: readfa.st - learn to read faster - sashakatsnelson
http://readfa.st
======
avree
Your site tells me absolutely nothing about the product without requiring me
to sign up.

Consequently, I did not sign up.

~~~
bherms
Agreed... You need a video, a tour, or a how it works section. I'm not signing
myself up for anything without a clue of what it does or how it works.

~~~
wahnfrieden
No, you need a lazy signup process -- let me use (most) everything
immediately. Save my data in a cookie or in a temporary user object on your
server, and make it permanent once I signup.

~~~
bcrescimanno
This would be great; but ANYTHING other than a signup form on the front page
would be a huge improvement.

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jasonkester
15 years into the web and still we see new sites coming out with the "Go Away"
pattern. I just don't understand it.

If a potential user has somehow managed to find his way onto your homepage,
that's a big win for you. You need to take that opportunity to hook him as
quickly and effectively as possible. Given the average attention span on the
internet, you've got at most 5 seconds to avert the Back Button, then maybe 10
more to convince that user that your thing is worth investing some time in.

Know the absolute worst thing you can do at that point? Stick that user on a
page with absolutely no information about your product, then assign him some
chores to do so before you'll let him even find out. Like this:

<http://readfa.st/signin>

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SkyMarshal
Hey guys, great idea, but your method seems off from most of the speed reading
courses I've found.

Whereas those courses focus on training you to not just read individual words,
but entire lines or blocks of text, and without subvocalization, yours seems
to focus on increasing your word-by-word reading speed as much as possible.

In your FAQ you say:

 _"We have taken the latest speed-reading curricula and cut out all of the
extraneous exercises to create an effective, simple tool to improve reading
speed. The readfa.st curriculum forces users to read at speeds that push the
upper limits of your comprehension and by constantly challenging you to push
yourself faster; at the same time we use regular quizzes to ensure that you
maintain your understanding of the text."_

What is the 'latest speed-reading curricula' you've based the site exercises
on? I have an interest but not expertise in this subject, would love to know
more details.

Also...

 _"Ani, one of our co-founders, read at over 1,000 words per minute without
any training. When we noticed how blazingly fast he was finishing books, we
began to look into what makes people read at such vastly different speeds. We
did extensive research into the scientific (and pseudo-scientific) literature
around how people read, but the body of work is not very encouraging. Most
speed-reading products make unverified and unverifiable claims about their
effectiveness, and because of their SEO and sales interests, those specious
claims overwhelm most legitimate discussion around speed-reading. One of our
goals is for readfa.st to help us better understand the process of reading and
what factors affect speed and comprehension."_

It would be both awesome in general and good marketing in particular if you
elaborated on your findings. Think OK-Cupid data blog but about speed reading.

Finally, one question. On the initial assessment I hit 'Too Fast' at 1105 WPM,
but the report said I was only reading at 880 WPM. Why the discrepancy?

<http://i.imgur.com/zf9AC.png>

~~~
sashakatsnelson
The exercises we looked at were everything from the index-card/finger and
stop-watch to flashing words all-around the screen. Based on the small bits of
data available and the effectiveness of the various exercises on our own
reading speeds, we found that flashing "chunks" of text (similar to
spreeder.com) and the "word-snake" method (that we decided on) were the only
effective methods of increasing reading speed. Because the word-snake most
closely approximated off-line reading, we settled on that as the basis of our
curriculum. For sources, we looked at available literature like Evelyn Wood
and software like 7SpeedReading.

As far as a data blog - that is one of our middle-term goals, but until we
have more users, the best we can offer are anecdotal evidence. This type of
shoddy analysis is a big part of the problem with existing reading research,
so the plan is to wait until we have a more robust data-set before we start
publishing results. I'll post on HN when we start publishing results.

The reason for the difference between the final treadmill reading speed and
the suggested speed is that users regularly demonstrated a significant loss of
comprehension at the final speed. We think that it was because of the delay
between realizing that the treadmill was too fast and stopping the treadmill.
At first, we reduced the speed by 10%, but after a few more users, it was
clear that was insufficient, so we're trying it at 20%. The quiz speed is
adjustable (with the faster/slower buttons or by using f and s as hot-keys),
so it's meant more as a suggested starting point than as a definitive reading
speed.

Thanks for your feedback!

~~~
SkyMarshal
Ah cool. It's a very interesting area, and extremely useful this day and age.
Good luck with it!

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johnwatson11218
Every time the topic of speed reading comes up I post about

<http://www.zapreader.com/>

This javascript site parses a whole lot of text and displays it at a fixed
location very quickly. I can read about 475 words/minute with very good
comprehension. I don't catch all the specific names but in some cases I find
that I form a high level overview of the material much faster. I tend to
notice big picture patterns when I use this tool. I don't know why more people
aren't writing apps that work like this for ios or android. When I finish my
current side project I want to try something like this in flex.

~~~
sashakatsnelson
Another site, similar to ZapReader is spreeder.com. Sites like these offer a
really spartan reading experience, but on top of a proven
curriculum/methodology. They were a big part of what inspired us to create the
first version of readfa.st.

~~~
johnwatson11218
Yea I see what you mean about spreeder.com. I think what makes it so fast is
that I don't have to move my eye across the page in what I think are called
'saccades'.

I imagine an interface where I fix my gaze in the center and see text pulled
through the single point. Perhaps the words near the fix point are a little
blurry. Words further away are unreadable. I think there should be something
like a gutter on the right or left for images, equations or code samples that
floats from bottom to top as it is in context.

If I hit pause I would like to see all the text snap into focus with my focus
word highlighted somehow.

Also, I would like this to just work with any old web page. I hate having to
pull the print version of long articles then copy and paste into zap reader.

Good luck with your site.

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ftwinnovations
This site is fundamentally flawed. The key to fast reading is learning to read
phrases rather than words. It is the same concept as reading words instead of
letters (obviously after you have passed the phonetics reading stage).

The only site I know of to truly learn to read fast, without silly scams or
even a cost, is <http://www.readspeeder.com/> It takes a little figuring out
as it is really lacking in usability (I suggest reading the help files) but it
will give you staggering results.

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huhtenberg
Good stuff. It is the first Show HN site that I actually bookmarked for later.
It is well-done and it is _interesting_.

A couple of things though. Requiring an email address upfront means that I
will feed you a @mailinator.com one. Let people play with the site a bit, and
then require creating an account if they want to save the progress... or
something along these lines.

Second, a confirmation email appears to include a numerical user ID. This
inadvertently discloses the number of users you have to anyone who signs up.
May want to fix that.

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lpnotes
Nice idea! A couple of suggestions: 1) Make the quizzes shorter than 2
minutes. 2) As avree and bherms suggested, you need an intro. before the sign-
up. I'm just an impulsive sign-upper because I like checking out new sites,
but I suggested the site to my friend and he just stared at it before getting
distracted by something else.

~~~
sashakatsnelson
That's a good point on the quizzes - we've added logic to choose quizzes that
are more reasonable in length (going for 90 seconds for now and we'll see how
it affects use).

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creativeone
Awesome app! I'd actually enjoy reading regular books like this. Can I upload
PDFs to have read to me at my speed of choice? If you could access my kindle
library that be even better.

~~~
johnwatson11218
I have also wanted to do this, or have a link to pull in titles from project
gutenberg.

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rokhayakebe
I would pay between 5-10 usd/month to see my speed increase. I think I am
going to be using this tool a lot if it works.

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ladon86
Nice execution! I like the badges and WPM counter on the right, and it steps
you nicely into using it.

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josh33
I wouldn't change a thing. This is awesome. I will be using this to
consistently improve my language. With the amount of content I read online,
improving a skill at the same time is an added bonus that I think is awesome.
Curious how you will monetize.

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makepanic
mh would be awesome if you make an background-Fallback for the buttons or add
prefixes for more browsers.

i.e. in Opera i don't see any linear-gradient if you only use -moz- / -webkit-
just add a background:#color one line above the linear-gradient. Older
browsers display the #color and newer browsers use the background:linear-
gradient

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tagnu_
Nice app. Any way to integrate the bookmarklet on online pdfs files ? or
import the contents of .pdf to readfa.st?

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creativeone
Works on my iPhone, way to go, the screen size is a little nit of a problem
but the site runs smoothly.

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rorrr
That's not innovative at all.

