I've been using Spreeder to read online articles and long blog posts for a few years now. I'm amazed at how much information I retain from reading at 300 words/minute.

http://www.spreeder.com/app.php

The way you're calculating words per minute is wrong. You're calculating the page change without taking into account how many words at a time are being presented. So for instance, the refresh for show 30 / read 1 is the same as the refresh for show 30 / read 30. Yet clearly, if 'read 30' is set, the refresh should be substantially slower than if 'read 1' is set. Refresh in seconds should be (words at a time / words per minute) * 60. Right now you're just doing (60/wpm) and ignoring words at a time.

Speed reading is great to remember isolated facts and data, but it doesn't work to really understand anything.

If I want to absorb a complex idea and integrate it into my base of knowledge, I need to pause while reading, digest what I've read, figure out its implications, and think about it in relation to what I already know and understand. Speeding up the physical act of reading doesn't add any value here.

When I try to use these techniques, I usually end up mechanically scanning the text word by word without consciously comprehending anything, and having to keep going back to re-read the same paragraphs over and over again.

This is a cool idea. I suppose it would need some rudimentary analytics over time to work as an actual training tool?

One suggestion: For me, at least, my reading relies on the shape of the sentence. And I think for everyone they would be looking at the right edge of the sentence as more words are coming in. So it's really jarring to have the right edge jumping around, and it might make more sense to right-align the marquee.

This thing needs to move pixels at a time, rather than words at a time. It's really hard to calibrate your eyes to the next word when the length of the next word is unknown.

You lose the spatial cues of where each word's position is each time a new word is shifted on to the screen. Something like a smooth stock ticker would be much better.

Although, Spreeder looks much better.

Cool idea, but I would prefer it if you calculated words as groups of 5 letters (that's how it was calculated back when I was learning to type), and not as number of logical words. Because right now you're getting variable length chunks of text but my eyes really like to scan in uniform length chunks.

For instance suppose I am reading in 5 word groups. Some groups I read faster than others. So even though my average reading speed is a bit above 700 wpm, at 700 wpm in your application I have noticeable pauses where I've finished the current chunk, and I have chunks I do not finish. It is very frustrating.

Did you consider smooth scrolling instead of adding/removing a word at a time? The bouncing around due to different word-lengths is troubling me.

Cool project. Some ideas:

- let users play with fonts/colors/spacing to find their optimum setup.

- aggregate user preferences to find good defaults

Then you have an interesting blog post to write.

I think you should blow away the scrolling and have just two controls: chunk size and speed. Personally I found chunk size ~50 to be ideal.

Cool

1) It would be cool if the up and down arrow keys would make it faster and slower, or have some kind of gradual slider or something.

2) Doesn't speed reading have less to do with actual linear speed and more to do with effective and efficient scanning of the page? (I've heard people talk about moving from top left to bottom right)

Cool how sample text comes from the opening pages of 1984 that cover Winston's absolute lack of privacy, describing how the Thought Police can "plug in your wire whenever they wanted to". A topical choice. If only there had been a big social website that would allow him organise a privacy protest group.

+1 for right-aligned text.

I seemed to get the optimum reading speed and fluidity at 300 wpm, 10 words at a time, reading in 1 word at a time.

Edit: I also second mahipal's recommendation to right-align the text.

Show words 4 at a time, Read in 4 words at a time @ 500 WPM is the highest comfortable reading speed.

Does this mean I actually read at 2000 WPM?