The Glade 4.0

This is pretty cool. A company called Spritz is unveiling their new reading app that purports to increase reading speed by rapidly and sequentially displaying one word at a time, positioned in such a way as to minimize the need to move the eye to read up to 13 characters at a time. By doing this, they claim that readers can achieve high speed reading with full comprehension and minimal training and practice vs. other speed reading techniques.

Try it out on their site, there's an applet at the top of their page that will display the content on the page in their Spritz app, and you can adjust the speed in 50 WPM increments.

It seems reasonably effective, and it's definitely a neat technology. They're pitching it as a boon for wearable computing, as their self-imposed limitation of 13 characters makes it a natural fit for small form factor displays.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

That seems interesting, if a bit headache-inducing.

Yeah, if I crank it up past about 350, it definitely starts to get exhausting.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

GOOMH/Eyeballs. That was my tipping point as well.

Now, I can follow 600, which is as high as the demo on their site goes. I definitely feel like I might be missing something, kind of the way I feel when I skim.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Ditto. 450 was a pretty good happy-medium between reading and skimming, but above 350 just felt punishing on the eyes.

Very cool. I had it going at 550 wpm and I was able to keep up even when doing things like rubbing my eye with one hand. Pretty amazing.

Yeah, if they're talking about this for wearable computing, I'd want to have a small camera or sensor that could tell if I were blinking my eyes or something, and either slow or repeat a few words in reaction. Otherwise, at high speeds, you're kind of doomed to stare unflinchingly at it for long durations or else be relegated to inferring missed words based on context, which kind of defeats the purpose.

It also lacks a good browsing mechanism, so it won't completely replace normal text display/layout. I like the idea, and I look forward to seeing it available as browser plugins and a built-in feature for (non-eInk, obviously) ereaders and the like.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Reading quickly in and of itself shouldn't be the goal. I'd be curious to see the science behind retention and comprehension.

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I could see this being beneficial to the visually impaired. Especially if you can adjust font sizes, etc...

I would have to see how they plan to integrate it I into my reading technology before I get too excited...

Unconscious speed-reading is responsible for most of the errors I make on tests.

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The Dude abides.

At 600wpm I still felt like it was slowing me down from reading an entire page of text at a time, but I could see it being a useful timesaver on a small screen.

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Hmm. Can't try it out right now. My base reading speed is something like 2000-2500 wpm though. Does it go that high?

Just 600WPM at least on the website.

Seems like it'd be most useful for reading large amounts of content on a mobile phone, where you constantly have to be zooming and panning because the text is too small.

Or on a smart watch.

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