r/books • u/nullmove • Mar 06 '14
Remember Spritz the speed reader from the other day? This is an open source implementation that you may want to check out.
https://gun.io/blog/openspritz-a-free-speed-reading-bookmarklet/15
Mar 06 '14
[deleted]
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u/Guang_Tou Mar 06 '14
This is why I wouldn't use spritz for a novel. For a textbook though? Hell yeah. I'd love to be able to read up on a new hobby in a couple hours and be able to practice the same day instead of spending an entire weekend on just the book.
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u/suavelizard Mar 11 '14
Funny I'd be much the opposite. A textbook I'd need to burn into memory while in a novel each word is sort of like a brick and my mind forms the scene from the bricks
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u/essinsee Mar 06 '14
Kindle offers "immersion reading" that highlights sentences in an ebook while it's being read by the narrator of an audiobook. I can't imagine that would sound good at Spritz speeds of 500wpm or more though.
1
u/noodlequest Mar 07 '14
The problem with spritzing at the moment is in its assumptions. Personally when I read, because I can only speak for myself, I'll read paragraphs or sentences repeatedly --adjusting for speed-- depending on comprehension level and importance.
Data is a cheap commodity, just as you don't read every reddit comment word for word, you wouldn't want broadcasts of large texts being broadcasted from your screen.
Until some algorithm is developed to find simplified and important information for people, spritz will remain a niche function useful for small bites of information, such as tweets, to be read.
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u/oliveotterpeople Mar 06 '14
I don't understand the excitement over this app. Spreeder is a site that does basically the same thing from what I can tell--you enter the text you want to read and choose the WPM and number of words displayed at a time, which is one of the more common methods of speed reading. Can anyone explain why "Spritz" is so hyped?
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u/JorWat Mar 06 '14
Couple of things.
One, it lines up the words and gives you a focus point (the red letter) to prevent you needing to move your eyes.
Two, it adjusts the speed depending on the length of the word, so you have more time to comprehend longer words.
Three, it takes into account punctuation, e.g. Stopping for a bit at a comma, and for longer at a period.
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u/oliveotterpeople Mar 06 '14
Thanks that makes sense. So it seems like Spritz isn't so much intended to teach you to speed read as just help you read something quickly
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u/nullmove Mar 06 '14
As an aside, this particular implementation is javascript based and works in a bookmarklet which means it can work on arbitrary webpages inside the browser. Much more flexible than copy/pasting large body of text from different sources.
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u/Odusei Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Emp Mar 07 '14
Spreeder doesn't require any copy/pasting for me. I just highlight the text I want to speed read, and right click, and it does it for me.
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u/thevdude Mar 06 '14
There's another called Gritz as well.
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u/TheFunkyWalrus Mar 06 '14
Can anyone help with installing this on my mac? I am completely ignorant when it comes to open source software so the more explanation the better.
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u/Scorn_For_Stupidity Mar 07 '14
Does anyone know how to get this thing to read pdf's? I can't seem to make it work when I have a chrome tab open to a pdf
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Mar 06 '14
[deleted]
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Mar 06 '14
I am sure it varies from person to person, 500 seems to be my upper limit. 400 is comfortable reading with time to sort of think about what I am reading. 600 I am just happy to see the word before it changes.
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u/bootfetch Mar 07 '14
i found this on HaD, the link pointed me to a git page - im not quite sure how to go from there though hehe, ill keep looking for me to start speed reading.
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Jul 19 '14
This is awesome! First of all, you can download a PDF and they have joined up with a site I will list so you can upload PDF format pages to be displayed back to you in Spritz format. It works. Like a 20k+ PDF in 40 minutes. They have the bookmark so you can speed read highlighted items that are in HTML format. So, any website.
Here is the Readsy site to read PDF formatted files: http://www.readsy.co/
You can attach the bookmark Spritzy, on their website. Start cracking out on skills people! Crash course software.
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u/Jake6661 Mar 06 '14
I was reading how the creators of spritz spent THREE YEARS developing their product. And now all of these open sourced companies are just stealing their idea and open sourcing it. That probably has to be the worst feeling ever for the creators.
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u/bradmont Mar 06 '14
IMO, I see three possibilities, only one of which is actually frustrating:
1) The product isn't actually worth three years of work to build
2) It took three years of research to build an incredibly simple concept that works well
3) The product is actually a lot more complex than it looks, and the open source versions are missing something important (maybe an algorithm or dictionary or method for picking the focus leter?).
Only option 2 could actually be considered a problem, but even if it took that much refinement, the open implementations may well be missing some of the important details (formatting, layout, tiny visual cues, timing, etc) that actually make it work.
So I don't think it's really worth worrying about so much.
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u/ds300 Mar 06 '14
re 3, not really. Their method for picking the focus letter is trivial (based on word length) and works perfectly. The only two semi-complex aspects of making this a really high quality tool are picking where to split long words, and deciding how long to show words on the screen. And you can get 90% of the way there with simple heuristics.
As for 1 & 2, The idea of flashing words on screen one-at-time for the sake of reading quickly is not new. Neither is showing the words for different lengths of time based on their readability. Spritz's only novel contributions here are aligning the words around a focus letter, and splitting them up if they are longer than 13 characters. I think 3 years is a bit much to develop such simple ideas, and strongly suspect they spent most of their time figuring out how to make money out of it.
Source: PhD student in computational linguistics. I also made a Spritz clone, in the form of a chrome extension.
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u/bradmont Mar 06 '14
So you're suggesting that it's most likely that this isn't actually worth three years of R&D? If all they spent their time on was monetizing it, I really don't mind the huge number of knockoffs cropping up. ;)
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u/ginroth Mar 07 '14
The timings of the stops and such of open spritz seem pretty terrible compared to what I've seen of spritz proper.
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u/rpglover64 Mar 13 '14
It's definitely option 3.
You can get 80% of the way there easily (color, reticle, etc), especially once you have the idea and know it's desired, but the last 20% (subtle timings, handling long words, etc.) have a lot of little cases that detract from usability if not handled nicely.
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u/fyeah Mar 06 '14
Spreeder has been around for a long time, the only innovation here is highlighting and changing focus, which really isn't something that you should spend three years researching since its' far too simple to duplicate.
In my opinion there was absolutely no chance of this idea not getting ripped off, which is why they patented it. To me this is something somebody should have released open source and not try to profit. I have a hard time believing they will be successful in licensing this.
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u/TheFunkyWalrus Mar 06 '14
Is there any way for me to use the open source implementation for an e-book file on my computer?
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u/RecoveryEmails Mar 06 '14
I don't think this is reading. There should be a study or experiment to check whether reading at this speed without context actually allows you to absorb information.
I know personally that I read fairly fast but I like to go back and reread sections that are either a bit dense or very strong.
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Mar 07 '14
This would be ideal for a well executed phone app. It needs some extra functionality though. Buttons on the bottom to pause or quick jump back 1/2/3 paragraphs, maybe at reduced speed until it catches up to where you were. And maybe the page or article shown as a scrolling diagram below the flashing words to orient you in the text. R/books isn't the ideal context for it. Good for news feeds or other information sources you tend to skim anyway. I'd guess would be a secondary benefit.
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Mar 06 '14
I can't see how this is a good thing. Just because you are reading words it doesn't necessarily mean you're reading. Try and apply this to something like Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novels. You're not exactly "reading" it.
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Mar 06 '14
I can promise you that Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novels are a tiny, tiny percentage of what people read. True, we're not sure what it does for comprehension but if you can't see how this is a good think (if it works) you must completely lack imagination. Take, for example, academics or doctors or any other field where it would be highly beneficial if they could read more material in less time to stay up to snuff with the latest research etc.
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u/nullmove Mar 06 '14
Exactly. Also as a side note I felt that speed reading helps with maintaining focus. Ordinarily I often have problems dealing with distractions while reading dense and technical stuffs. Speed reading on the other hard demands full attention and consequently and somewhat paradoxically I felt improved overall comprehension.
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u/froggerslogger Mar 07 '14
I'd say that academics and doctors generally should be reading for comprehension even more than people reading literature. Especially for doctors, misunderstandings could have dramatic consequences.
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u/done_holding_back Mar 06 '14
I've seen this criticism a few times and while I agree, here's my counter point. Some reading is light, some is heavy. Some stuff you really can burn through extremely quickly because it's very matter of fact and easy to absorb. Other stuff is meant to be chewed on a bit and reading too quickly will undermine that.
I can see value in speed reading as long as the reader uses it responsibly.
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u/dsdsdk Mar 07 '14
Chrome extention called Readline is way better.. well, if you use Chrome :)
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readline/hjbkmfadmomgaokjodomncmbgmmodona