Read Faster with speed reading bookmarklet Squirt
If you could read twice as fast, you would only spend half the time reading. Speed reading is an interesting concept, one that works well to a certain degree and up to a point.
Depending on the complexity of the reading material, you may be able to speed things up even more than that or less. A complex scientific study for instance may require you to not only read but also think about what is being said, while a novel may not so much.
Generally speaking, most humans are capable of improving their reading speed up to a certain level with little to no training.
Speed reading applications such as Spreed for Chrome, ReadPal, or Windows Speed Reader help achieve that goal in various ways.
Read Faster with Squirt
Squirt is a bookmarklet that you can use in every modern browser. It is best placed on the bookmarks bar of the browser for fast access, but can be placed in the bookmarks as well if you are not using the toolbar in your browser.
If you are using the bookmarks bar, you will have to drag and drop the big squirt button to it so that it becomes attached to it.
If you prefer to bookmark, you right-click and select to bookmark this link (Firefox and Internet Explorer), or select copy link address (Chrome and Opera), open the bookmarks manager and add a new bookmark using the copied link text as the url.
Using the app
To use the speed reading bookmarklet, all you have to do is click on the bookmarklet to start. If you highlight text before you do so, only that text will be used by the application.
The interface displays one word at a time using the words per minute count on the right. You can increase or decrease the speed with a click on the up or down arrow buttons here.
The default setting of 400 words per minute may be too fast for some users. It is suggested to slow down the speed until you are comfortable with the pace the words are displayed to you.
Once you get accustomed to that speed level, you can increase the count to read faster.
Instead of using the mouse to control the words per minute speed, pause, play or back, you can also use keyboard shortcuts to achieve the same thing.
The up and down arrow buttons increase and decrease the words per minute, space pauses or continues playback, and left goes back a word.
Closing Words
What I like about the bookmarklet is that it works well with readability extensions or bookmarklets, and that it gives you full control over the process.
The one issue that you may run into is that it does not remember custom wpm settings but always reverts back to 400 wpm whenever you invoke its functionality.
That's somewhat of a problem for readers who prefer a slower words per minute reading speed as words start to be displayed the second the interface is loaded. You may have to slow down the speed and go back to the beginning then to start over.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.