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p/read-fasterSpeed read articles w/o compromising your comprehension
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Sakun

Read πŸ’© Faster - Speed read articles w/o compromising your comprehension

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Read πŸ’© Faster is a web app that allows you to drastically increase your WPM without compromising your reading comprehension. Rather than reading left-to-right, you're reading one word at a time as each word flashes on your screen.

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Sakun
Maker
Hey PH! First launch here. I saw a video while browsing Instagram a few months ago that demonstrated how our minds are able to read and process text faster when words are presented to us one-by-one rather than a blob (which would force us to move our eyes). From what I understood, the average person can read about 200 WPM with roughly 60% comprehension. But by using this technique, where you read text word-by-word instead of line-by-line, it's possible to increase your WPM without ever reducing your comprehension. I found this pretty interesting, so I made a simple web-app out of it (it's responsive so you can use your phones as well). You can currently configure your WPM and paste your own text. I've been using it to read through articles faster, but I figured that other people might benefit from this as well. At some point I'd like to add a feature where you'd be able to pull text from articles/books without having to copy/paste it (heck maybe even a browser add-on), but we'll see :) P.S. See if you can find the Easter egg ;)
Luca
@sakunacharige what's the difference with spreeder? https://www.spreeder.com/app.php It is scientifically backed even the fact that this kind of reading decreases short and long term retention. Yes, you are able to understand what you read but you won't be able to remember it. There are other kinds of effective speed reading tecniques.
Linus Ekenstam
@sakunacharige @luqa - wow what a pessimist comment. Speed reading at these levels is actually a great way to improve your overall reading capabilities. 300-700 words per minute is simple to achieve with the right tools, and only when you reach +2000 words per minute you'll lose comprehension, this is what is scientifically proven. You can check the works of Carver from 1992 and McNamara's findings on the subject (they are all disputing 25.000 words per minute) and as they should. We can't read at the speed of light and retain the information. Awesome work Sakun. Spreeder is also nice, but old and needs a refresh. A while back I played around a lot with the idea of a website plugin that would turn any article into a speed reading article with fine tune controls. I wanted to add character fixation similar to Spritz (https://www.spritz.com/) never got to implement it but it's still a little side project, would love to collaborate and make this into a better product. I'd be happy to chat, hit me up here or DM on twitters. Here is my demo of the speed reading, I named it Plato for fun. http://linusekenstam.com/plato/
Sakun
Maker
@luqa @varun_omprakash Yeah I heard about Spreeder, it's nice but I felt the concept could be improved upon more + it feels outdated. As far as this form of reading causing you to lose long-term/short-term retention, that's probably if you increase your WPM to anything above ~1500+ words. Anything under that is reasonable and you probably won't lose any retention.
Sakun
Maker
@luqa @linusekenstam Thank you! And that sounds like a pretty good idea; it's definitely something that could be really useful. I'm open to collaborating on it :)
Luca
@linusekenstam you are talking about speedreading in general. As I said "there are other kinds of effective speed reading tecniques". You are talking about comprehension, I'm talking about retention which is a different thing. And reading words one-by-one affects retention. These are facts. I doubt that in 1992 they used app like this one so you are citing irrelevant sources. I know that speed reading works, but not this one.
Mark Babych

It will be a good practice if you create an extension for browsers that will parse pages and help you read it.

Pros:

It really improves your reading speed

Cons:

It's harder to analize numbers and statistics then words that flashing before you.

Sakun
Maker
Hey thanks for your feedback! I'll look into improving it over the next few days, I can see how it'd be useful. Definitely have been considering making a browser add-on as well :)
OffCornerDev
it's pretty neat! You could also create a simple bookmarklet (or heck, I could try doing it too!) to enable this reader on any webpage
Sakun
Maker
@offcorner Thank you! I'll probably get to it, but if you'd like to do it, go for it!! :)
Tobiasz Jankowski
Holy shit, it actually works! I've tested and pasted a first news article I've found and actually managed to understand it quicker and with higher detail. This has a lot of potential -- maybe it'd be great to convert it to a browser plugin or an app which could transfer the text to read it that way?
Tobiasz Jankowski
Is this the easter egg tho?
Sakun
Maker
@tobiasz_jankowski Yep, definitely on the agenda. Will improve it more over the next few days :)
Dayle Rees
This one has been around for a while and has a bookmarklet: https://squirt.io/install.html
Rogue London
Can you use it with kindle. I have so many unread books. But I am a speed reader. Go figure. Could this work with kindle? Sometimes it takes the right tool.
Sakun
Maker
@iamroguelondon I've never used a Kindle, so I'm not entirely well-versed on how they work :P. It might be able to work with it in the future, I'll keep working on it.
Alissa R
@iamroguelondon @sakunacharige wow, yes, if you were to somehow integrate ebook compatibility with it, that would be amazing!
Łukasz Ostrowski
Not a new idea (https://www.spritz.com/ has few years), but nice to see another solution, when its free. However, it requires some work: - End of sentences should be a little more delayed, to logically end some thought. - Highlighting "middle" letter improves readability (like spritz do)
Sakun
Maker
@vorthess Yeah there are some other products that virtually do the same thing. Those are good points, I'll take those into account when pushing out a new update soon, thanks! :)
Lydia Sugarman

The test was really interesting. Looking forward to using it more.

Pros:

A good simple solution.

Cons:

None at this time.

Wasim Ullah
Loved it. Haha.
Ihor Levenets πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦

Nothing more

Pros:

Overall it's good, it seems I was really reading faster than usual

Cons:

My eyes became tired really quick. Can you do smth with it?

Sakun
Maker
You can always click the pause button for a quick break :). It might be possible to add some sort of auto-pausing feature where you can configure when (after x amount of words read) to stop and resume (after x amount of seconds). Feel free to chip in with other ideas though.
Lukas RΓΆhle
nice idea!
Marco Fabrega
Very simple idea! What are you thinking of doing in terms of user research to validate some of the moves you made for this version??
Sakun
Maker
@marcoafabrega Not sure I understand the question fully, but I came across an experiment that had users test their reading speeds--they'd read the same article as they would normally and they compared it to using this method, where they read each word individually. I just turned that concept into little app :)
Susan Curtis
Just started reading this way today it seems like a very promising idea! So far so great
Sakun
Maker
@susan_curtis Glad to hear it! Gonna be adding some new features to it soon :)
Troy Holloday
I really like this @sakunacharige. It definitely works!
Fashionable
This works for me because I usually re-read good stuffs and it will help me sieve out the gems quickly before diving deep. For ebooks or even paper books, I usually use an OCR app to extract the texts out... Have been doing this to run it in Text to Speech software for those publications that do not have an audiobook version yet. Great product here.... An idea to improve on it; * have a slider to control the speed, around the predetermined one, by swiping while reading
Sakun
Maker
@fashionable Great idea! I'll keep that in mind
Madilaine Venzon
Congrats on the launch! I'm always looking for ways to increase my reading speed! This sounds perfect!
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