Spreeder

I found this "speed reading" development program advertised on another site and decided to try it. For $9 a month it sounded pretty reasonable. However, when you try to cancel your card and follow the steps to cancel your account you end up on a blank screen. You cannot cancel your "admin" setting, delete yourself from your own account and have to submit a help ticket to get anything done. Of course, this will take you past any "free trial subscription" period. Do not use this site under any circumstances, it's a scam and they simply want your money.

The software that you download to install on your computer requires you to be connected to the Internet and open an account with them, disclosing your personal data to use any of its features and upload your private documents to their servers for it to work.

There is no way their software will work off line. You can only use an account you set up on their servers. So anything you read, when, from where and how much, they know about. This company is basically a data harvesting operation that is out to collect your data.

If you're interested in a speed reading class, perhaps that's fine if you're careful about what you chose to read. But if you have any documents you want to read, say for work, or personal documents on your computer of a private nature, then this software is absolutely unacceptable.

This was NOT disclosed as a requirement to use their speed reading app. This app is spyware, plain and simple. Do not trust.

The company and product is a scam. I was about to go through with the
Order then realsed it was kinda stupid, clicked the wrong button now
They require my phone number for a refund. Huh? What happened to no
Questions asked.
Edit: There was no further contact from them after stupidly giving them my phone number. They collect your info and sell it. Don't get involved with these people
/end edit
I called my bank and they said it's been collected and
Cashed out of their bank so they couldn't refund or cancel it. This was a card purchase which I thought was safe but apparently not. BEWARE. THEY'RE PURE SCAMMERS

Spreeder is a deceptively simple web-based tool that is designed to help you read faster. Words which you choose - either by cutting and pasting your own text or by using the Spreeder bookmarklet - are then flashed back at you according to a set of parameters of your own choosing. The most significant of these are the words per minute, and the chunk size. The latter refers to the number of words that are flashed back to you at a time. In addition you can select your own font size and color, window size and background color. Further and more advanced settings allow you to experiment with parameters such as variable chunk size and skipping over certain types of words.

There are two useful provided links, one to a Wikipedia article on the subject of speed reading in general, and one to a good blog entry in which the author tries the tool for himself and suggests ways to approach it.

As is noted in that blog, this tool is a good way to learn to speed read online material but further and different techniques are also needed to speed read books and other offline sources. So if you spend most of your life online and find that you're a stranger to the printed word these days, this is going to be well worth your while pursuing.

On a lark, I recently decided to take a speed reading class, where we were taught simple techniques such as sub-vocalization (supressing the voice inside your head as your read) and getting your eyes used to reading batches of words at a time. Both techniques run counter to a person's natural reading habits and we were given uncomfortable exercises to help unlearn our old ways of reading. Eventually, I was able to get my reading speeds up to 700 words per minute from 400 words per minute, so I'm convinced this stuff actually works.

At the end of the class, our instructor told us about Spreeder, a free online application which allows you to enter any text you want to read faster and then flashes the text back to you at a configurable rate. Not only is it a great way to quickly get through the latest article your boss told you to read, but it's also a great tool to hone your speed-reading skills from time to time. Definitely worth giving a try if you're looking to increase your daily productivity.