FreeGameDev

Ok, this is sadly not open-source:

http://gp.spritzinc.com/spritzinc/

But IMHO the most exciting technology since... the internet? Crazy that something this simple wasn't done optimized like this before.

Ok maybe I am exaggerating but this seems to easily double or triple (and with a bit of training quadruple) reading speed, some really relevant to capture more of todays knowledge (and squeeze in the time to read more awesome novels ).
At least for me I really get a kind of tunnel view and just adsorb the text with blending out surroundings (maybe not the best for their planned mobile use ).

There is also this: http://www.spreeder.com/ but it seems to take more time to get used to.

ok there is more... but not as optimized: http://vanniktech.de/SpeedReader/

Yeah that's awesome. I'm reading and it's really quick and, oh, crap, what was that word? I can't... no... tha... STOP! I'm lost!

No, it's not that great. It's a cool toy. Another method to consume more but consume less accurately.

If you can't keep up slow down a bit

But a more sophisticated solution would obviously allow pausing and rewinding.

I need to test this a bit more (using that speedreader linux app linked above), so far I seem to be able to concentrate even better on the text, or lets say it seems better for reading on a screen.

You can concentrate better because you are just consuming it. You are not absorbing it. Real learning material or very well written books often have sentences you need to go through a few times to absorb it. This, well, it's a long way off being usable for that IMHO.

Not so sure, but you might be right.

Here are two (also not as optimized) firefox plugins:
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/a ... vp-reader/
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/reasy/

I guess I must have been living under a rock...

Well this is usually the case with any idea or technology. Somebody clever invents it. Somebody with panache sees an unfulfilled opportunity and markets it as their own. Very few big success stories were ever original, just the inventors are rarely the type of people to know how to generate buzz and get something in the public eye.

I'm not a fan of speed reading tbh, as I've found that you are unable to enjoy literature or read between the lines when going at that speed. Weaning off subvocalisation is definitely a plus, although I'm still doubtful if it's worth the effort. Speed reading might be good as something to pick up earlier in life, too late for me

speed reading is great for entertainment. I am able to read 500 wpm or so without trouble absorbing it. it doesn't work well for academic papers, where most of your time is spent thinking, not reading. but for reading novels it really is great, if you're used to it. I worked on a free speed reading program in Elm. I guess I should finish that soon!

http://www.squirt.io/ seems to be the best free implementation right now.

This is not anything new - the "wow" factor is that of speed reading.

This is basically a method to teach people speed reading, and that's why it seems amazing - but the top Google hit for programs to learn speed reading is spreeder (mentioned above), which has been around since at least 2006 ( http://lifehacker.com/196245/teach-your ... h-spreeder ).

Is it new that it's an SDK? Perhaps, but it's a bit sad that something so basic is being sold as a library - maybe I should sell a scrolly text SDK.

What is new is more marketing - but I find that it annoying that they gain a market by basically being deceptive: not telling people about speed reading, but making people think that the improvement in reading is through their method alone. Presenting it as some revolutionary idea even though both speed reading and the method to learn it are not new. And then presenting it in time to take advantage of new technology like watches and glass.

It claims:

"Reading is inherently time consuming because your eyes have to move from word to word and line to line."

I don't think this is true at all - for most people, the bottleneck isn't how fast you can move your eyes. It's because they don't speed read at all (e.g., reading each word at a time, thinking the word aloud in their head), or are limited by comprehension rate. Indeed, the rate that the demo showed words was not faster than I could move my eyes over the same text. The key part to how it works is that it forces you to speed read, prevents you from rereading, and forces a constant rate.

Once you've learned to speed read, you can do it just as well or better with traditional text, and you don't need an annoying popup to move to a faster rate (or slower, for more difficult to comprehend material).

It does take up less space on the page, but if I'm reading, I'm happy to devote the screen space to it, even if I had a small feature phone. It might be useful to display messages in say a game, but they've been doing that for years in various ways, including the way presented here.

The reason why this isn't done as a standard way for display text is it's annoying to force this onto people. Except on watches or glass, where it becomes the obvious natural way to do it (either that, or continuous scrolling).