BookMuncher software enables speed-reading on your mobile

Having e-reader functionality on your mobile or handheld certainly isn't new, but a British company is developing software that will reportedly allow you to breeze through War and Peace at an astounding "300 words-per-minute." The company utilizes Rapid Serial Visualization Presentation (RSVP) to display text in "word by word" fashion mid-screen, which forces your brain to simply "absorb" the word rather than read and then subvocalize (that's the real time waster, folks) before moving on. The company claims that the science behind the speed-reading revolution is "word shape recognition," which differs from the relationship between letters that we're used to looking for. While there's no set release date nor price for the mobile version, a comparable PC-ready version goes for £20 ($38), and we're sure this miracle-working software will have you blasting through Engadget's front page in just a matter of milliseconds whenever it becomes available.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 4th 2006 5:09PM]

I used a product called RapidReader in my Psion PDA days 8-10 years ago. I could read a novel at about 450 words per minute quite comfortably.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 5th 2006 11:30PM]

I used a product called RapidReader in my Psion PDA days 8-10 years ago.

[(Unverified) Posted Nov 25th 2006 3:54PM]

Thanks for your comments about RapidReader. Just to update your Psion info. SoftOlogy IdeaWorks now has a version for Symbian Communicators, Palm Treo as well as RapidReader PRO for Windows which now has support for accelerated reading for PDF.
Please visit the new site http://www.rapidreader.com and download a trial copy.
Peter McIan
SoftOlogy IdeaWorks