This kind of things are gimmicky at best, and an awful reading experience at worst. The time it takes for your eyes to adjust to the blinking letters is larger than the saccadic movement, and a single saccade reads a bunch of words instead, allowing you to both comprehend the sentence immediately, and also easily skip back-forward in case of errors.
On the other hand, I found it incredibly useful. My mind often wanders when I read, and Squirt solves that.
I found their choice of color scheme jarring. They highlight a specific letter in blue for some reason, and you get a strange optical sensation after staring at that shade of blue for too long. I had to download their js and css, rehost it myself, search through it for the color code, and change it to black. But then I found it very useful.
I notice I get tunnel vision staring at the exact same spot for 10 seconds. The rest of the screen starts to flicker or something, like when you were a kid and would stare at an inverse American flag before looking at a white wall.
Using an extension similar to this (readline) has let me read things much more rapidly than my normal reading speed. Even faster considering it prevents my mind from wandering or eyes from getting distracted. It's not a gimmick at all.
While it is pretty interesting for quick reading of small snippets of text it begins to fail when trying to build up a comprehension map of a large body of information. Especially if that information is of a highly technical nature. The lack of comprehension is compounded; the more unfamiliar you are with the concepts at hand.
One of the things that we do without thinking about it is make associations between things we know and things we don't know when reading. This allows us to provide a framework for the words and phrases we don't understand using the ones that we do, thus pulling the meaning out of the context. Spritz and by extension Squirt does not allow you to create these links because you don't retain the full breadth of the context for each word as you are reading them, and with no built in method for jumping back or forth through the information being presented it fails to allow these bridges to be built, and this lowers comprehension.
Now take something like this and implement an interface that tracks the users eye movement via a webcam to allow the flow of words to jump backwards and forwards through the surrounding information might work. But you would have to do some pretty impressive eye tracking and do it all with as little delay as possible to make the flow smooth, no matter what direction it goes. That said jumping back in the information would probably be jarring if the text just starts to flow in reverse. So one would probably have to jump back with some kind of visual cue to a pointer further back in the text and then continue reading forward again.
Also I'd love to see this implemented where it shows a sentence at a time. I'd be interested in the overall improvements to retention and understanding that would be gained with a reduction in potential top speed per word read. How drastically does speed fall off when you do this?
I think this kind of thing is pretty interesting... For me, the reason I can't use it for most stuff I read is that I often need more time to process/understand certain words and names. On the first article from Instapaper that I tried this on, I was fed a sentence containing the words "doxological peregrinations." That threw me off, and then I knew I would have trouble keeping up. It'd be interesting if there was some nonintrusive way to dynamically adjust the speed. I also found it confusing when first names and surnames were separated, because I tend to recognize a person's name as a whole entity. Spritz seems to use longer pauses for commas, which seems helpful. But I really miss being able to see the whole sentence I'm "reading"...
For me it's more than just the sentence that I miss reading. I miss the context of the entire paragraph and, to a lesser degree, being able to see the preceding and following paragraphs.
I recently rediscovered the joy of reading longer pieces that take their sweet time to build up to a point, or to explain something complex. These texts are generally both longer and denser than, say, blog posts, and while paragraphs don't always require repeated reading, I usually find myself skipping back and forth between them to get a good mental image of the way they relate to each other.
I think tools such as this might be useful for reading relatively simple texts (blog posts, biographies, certain novels), but if anything I want to do less of that in the first place.
If you pause playback, the surrounding words appear. If you then hold down the right arrow key, you can speedread at your own pace.
I wish keyboard buttons were pressure-sensitive so that you could adjust how fast something is going by pressing harder. But in lieu of that, using arrow keys to scroll through the words is a pretty nice reading experience for me.
You'll notice that in the site's Acknowledgements section, the first to be credited is "Spritz Inc, the company whose patents are pending" [1].
Also in the acknowledgements is a link[2] titled "The problem with software patents."
Essentially, Squirt's creator, Cameron Boehmer, is letting everyone know that he has appropriated patent-pending technology because he rejects the idea that the method should be patentable. (Whether a court will disagree with him and impose a fine is, apparently, a chance he's willing to take.)
I want this as a mobile app, and I want it to be able to read anything I throw at it. Right now, I have "readquick" on my iPad. I haven't checked if it can read PDF's but I think it can, so that helps me read most things as I can read anything that's in my "Pocket" list. But, Read Quick doesn't do the color highlighting which seems to be the killer thing here.
So. Are you going to give me an iPad app that integrates with Pocket and can read PDF's or integrate with Kindle and iBooks? That's when it becomes super useful and I would definitely sign-up and if you let me try it for long enough to make sure I'm happy with it, then I'm also willing to pay.
I see a lot of comments showing Spritz, but this concept is completely new to me and this is my first time trying something like this.
I've spent the last hour or so using this bookmarklet to read various articles and I have to say this is really cool. While I love to read, it's usually in short bursts because I get distracted. With this I went through a couple longer articles without changing tabs, or coming back to them. This really helps with my ADD.
I'll likely Google later, but is anyone immediately aware if there have been studies on this style of reading for people with ADD?
I have tried this in the past. I dont know if it's the same product or other, but same idea. My main problems where that I want to pause, maybe google some words or terms or person, go back to previous sentence, or skip some sentences alltogether. It gave me a lot of trouble because I couldn't find the text I wanted to highlight/rightclick/google etc, so I ended up taking more time for the same text.
That being said, I do believe it has it's uses. Maybe on a mobile device, maybe for literature only.
Great idea!
I would suggest adding an option to read the highlighted text so as to make sure you can get the plugin to work even when it can't detect the portion of the page where the article is.
Well... from the previous HN discussion I had Squirt in my favorites bar, until I did a work presentation and realized the name could be misinterpreted! I then quickly deleted it.
> Average readers read between 120 and 200 words per minute
I don't know if that's true or not, but my reading speed is over 500 wpm, and I'm not even a native English speaker. At that speed, Squirt makes me seasick.
[+] [-] return0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|11 years ago|reply
I found their choice of color scheme jarring. They highlight a specific letter in blue for some reason, and you get a strange optical sensation after staring at that shade of blue for too long. I had to download their js and css, rehost it myself, search through it for the color code, and change it to black. But then I found it very useful.
[+] [-] danielweber|11 years ago|reply
EDIT ten minutes later my eyes still hurt
[+] [-] Houshalter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmstout|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orillian|11 years ago|reply
One of the things that we do without thinking about it is make associations between things we know and things we don't know when reading. This allows us to provide a framework for the words and phrases we don't understand using the ones that we do, thus pulling the meaning out of the context. Spritz and by extension Squirt does not allow you to create these links because you don't retain the full breadth of the context for each word as you are reading them, and with no built in method for jumping back or forth through the information being presented it fails to allow these bridges to be built, and this lowers comprehension.
Now take something like this and implement an interface that tracks the users eye movement via a webcam to allow the flow of words to jump backwards and forwards through the surrounding information might work. But you would have to do some pretty impressive eye tracking and do it all with as little delay as possible to make the flow smooth, no matter what direction it goes. That said jumping back in the information would probably be jarring if the text just starts to flow in reverse. So one would probably have to jump back with some kind of visual cue to a pointer further back in the text and then continue reading forward again.
Also I'd love to see this implemented where it shows a sentence at a time. I'd be interested in the overall improvements to retention and understanding that would be gained with a reduction in potential top speed per word read. How drastically does speed fall off when you do this?
[+] [-] jackweirdy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgag|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbrock|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mercer|11 years ago|reply
I recently rediscovered the joy of reading longer pieces that take their sweet time to build up to a point, or to explain something complex. These texts are generally both longer and denser than, say, blog posts, and while paragraphs don't always require repeated reading, I usually find myself skipping back and forth between them to get a good mental image of the way they relate to each other.
I think tools such as this might be useful for reading relatively simple texts (blog posts, biographies, certain novels), but if anything I want to do less of that in the first place.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|11 years ago|reply
I wish keyboard buttons were pressure-sensitive so that you could adjust how fast something is going by pressing harder. But in lieu of that, using arrow keys to scroll through the words is a pretty nice reading experience for me.
[+] [-] jawns|11 years ago|reply
Also in the acknowledgements is a link[2] titled "The problem with software patents."
Essentially, Squirt's creator, Cameron Boehmer, is letting everyone know that he has appropriated patent-pending technology because he rejects the idea that the method should be patentable. (Whether a court will disagree with him and impose a fine is, apparently, a chance he's willing to take.)
---
[1] http://www.spritzinc.com
[2] http://lmgtfy.com/?q=the+problem+with+software+patents
[+] [-] joshcanhelp|11 years ago|reply
http://www.spritzinc.com/where-can-i-experience-spritz/
Squirt is prettier but the functionality looks identical.
[+] [-] scrrr|11 years ago|reply
To me it seems that it's a bit like patenting flappy bird.
[+] [-] krmmalik|11 years ago|reply
So. Are you going to give me an iPad app that integrates with Pocket and can read PDF's or integrate with Kindle and iBooks? That's when it becomes super useful and I would definitely sign-up and if you let me try it for long enough to make sure I'm happy with it, then I'm also willing to pay.
[+] [-] brianbreslin|11 years ago|reply
Does readquick let you import existing PDFs?
[+] [-] libraryatnight|11 years ago|reply
I've spent the last hour or so using this bookmarklet to read various articles and I have to say this is really cool. While I love to read, it's usually in short bursts because I get distracted. With this I went through a couple longer articles without changing tabs, or coming back to them. This really helps with my ADD.
I'll likely Google later, but is anyone immediately aware if there have been studies on this style of reading for people with ADD?
[+] [-] bagosm|11 years ago|reply
That being said, I do believe it has it's uses. Maybe on a mobile device, maybe for literature only.
[+] [-] dang|11 years ago|reply
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=squirt.io#!/story/forever/0/squirt...
The cutoff is about a year, so we're burying this submission as a dupe.
[+] [-] Houshalter|11 years ago|reply
You can highlight the text you want to read or hover over a paragraph and click it while holding alt.
[+] [-] sgarbi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron4hire|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnnnni|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _mikz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattkevan|11 years ago|reply
The thought of anything squirting in my eyes, ears or wherever is one I don't want.
[+] [-] hisem|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dletozeun|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pron|11 years ago|reply
I don't know if that's true or not, but my reading speed is over 500 wpm, and I'm not even a native English speaker. At that speed, Squirt makes me seasick.
[+] [-] libraryatnight|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]