The reading game is about to change forever. Boston-based software developer Spritz has been in “stealth mode” for three years, tinkering with their program and leasing it out to different ebooks, apps, and other platforms.
Now, Spritz is about to go public with Samsung’s new line of wearable technology.
A day or two later I saw this on the Spritz web site:
"Updates: The First Web News Reader with Spritz Debuts
The Old Reader allows you to read all of your favorite news with Spritz! Simply sign up for an account (free), add your favorite RSS feeds and then turn on Spritz in your Settings. Once you’ve created your accounts, you’ll be carving through your news like a knife through warm butter."My immediate reaction, posted to facebook, was to say:
Oh, this might be awesome. I've been using the Old Reader ever since google reader closed up shop. Definitely need to check this out.As a long time user of google reader and subsequently, the old reader, I saw great opportunity for speed reading RSS feeds through the old reader. I also thought that Spritz might be useful for reading academic papers for school. So, I started to play around with it. On that first day, I was able to read their web site samples up to about 550 or 600 words per minute, so I was excited to get started. In the intervening months, I have continued to experiment with Spritz and other RSVP apps on windows and android.
For example, on windows, I'm using the Spritz bookmarklet and I have enabled the add-on (or plug-in or extension or whatever they call it) in the old reader. On android, I've tried a number of different apps, but the ones I've had the best luck with have been the Balto Speed Reader, Sprint Inspired by Spritz, and
A Faster Reader.
After nearly a year and a half of sporadic use, I'm ready to report mixed results and give some feedback. As a relative novice, I may accidentally interchange the words Spritz and RSVP at places in the following description, but it is important to understand that Spritz is a single implementation of the RSVP technique.
How it works
Spritz uses RSVP, which presents the words one at a time, with a specific character (denoted the ORP - Optical Recognition Point) in a consistent location. This seems to enable faster reading by letting the eyes remain in a single location. I suspect that it's conceptually similar to keeping related data close together on a computer disk in order to minimize the mechanical movement of the disk-arm. In addition to using a single screen location, Spritz also highlights the ORP character in a different color so that the eyes are drawn to the supposed optimal location. Some of the other Android products I've played with either don't do that, or they have a user-configurable setting to determine whether and how to highlight the ORP. Balto Speed Reader displays more than one word in a less prominent font. When you pause reading, Sprint Inspired by Spritz shows you the entire page for context in a diminished font.
With this style of presentation, reading becomes a different experience. It's very much like watching a movie.
Desktop
With regards to both of my initial goals on the desktop, I have been disappointed. Reading through Spritz in the old reader is great, when the entire article goes through the RSS feed, but too many web sites only send a sentence or a two through RSS and force you to click back to their site. I have also not found any way to Spritz PDF documents on the desktop. I've found a few half-hearted attempts to enable RSVP in Windows for PDF documents, but none that really seemed usable.
The best use I've found for Spritz on my desktop is reading long articles through the browser bookmarklet (like those on edge.org).
Android
I haven't found any general purpose Spritz applications, so I've resorted to using other RSVP apps. To read lengthy web pages, I share from my Maxthon browser to A Faster Reader. For reading PDF documents on my Android tablet, I've had good luck with the paid version of Balto Speed Reader, and for epub format books, I've used Sprint Inspired by Spritz. According to the start-up message, Balto is getting ready to switch to Spritz, but I haven't received that update yet.
Focused Reading
I can't find it again now, but I read somewhere that said RSVP can be described as "focused reading". This is a perfect description. Although the reading experience feels like watching a movie, you can't let your mind drift in and out like you do with graphical content. Of course I can't know, but to me it feels like speed reading works because it forces me to pay attention - to remain focused. If I get distracted or look away, I miss something. And backing up is very annoying. Consequently, I think I'm more disciplined about paying attention when reading this way. As a consequence, however, I'm very sensitive to the speed. Too slow, and I get bored and distracted -- Too fast, and I can't keep up.
One unexpected side-effect of the way RSVP works is that I have to change my habits in order to read effectively. I am accustomed to listening to music while reading. With RSVP, it is very difficult to simultaneously read and listen to music. More generally, any type of multi-tasking while reading is very disruptive and must be avoided.
Other Notes
One of the first things I noticed is that I can't read as fast, "in the wild" as I could on Spritz's web site. My "natural" reading speed seems to vary between 300 and 500 words per minute, and I have to find the best speed for any particular article. I sometimes even have to adjust speed several times while reading.
I would like to be able to use Spritz (or RSVP) to read ebooks that are purchased through Barnes & Noble, but still haven't found a way. As already noted, I would really really like to be able to use RSVP to read PDF documents on Windows, but haven't found a way that seems workable. Also, if a book or document has a high density of tables or figures, it's easy to get disoriented.
Lastly, reading documents with a significant number of APA format citations is an absolutely miserable, horrible, and wretched experience.
Conclusion
In short, Spritz in particular and RSVP in general show promise. On the desktop, the Spritz bookmarklet is excellent for reading long, textual, web articles from the browser bookmarklet, and the Spritz add-on at theoldreader.com is sometimes helpful. On Android, other RSVP applications are similiarly useful. I haven't tried any iOS products.
On the other hand, there is plenty of room for improvement. RSVP is decidedly less useful if you have a document with high density of tables, images, and it borders on worthless with APA style citations. Also, I am unaware of any way to use RSVP to read epub books that are protected by DRM.
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