Cleaning Off My Desktop with RapidReader
February 1st, 2008If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
No Time To Read
I don’t know about you, but I don’t get that much time to read. I used to read all the time. Now I get eye bites. Short glimpses of paragraphs. Reading half of a book and then figuring out the rest for myself.
But I have a lot I want to read and 100% of what I am able to accomplish online is due to the fact that I force myself to continue my education at all times. I grew up in a city where a good job is in construction or a factory and assumed from the intellectual level of all the adults that I met that a brain somehow rotted after high school. I didn’t want mine to rot, so I always had at least one book I was reading.
When I started make money from what I learned, I turned up the heat a little bit. Then I had a family. It is their time now. But I still want to keep this education going. It’s the only way to stay at the forefront of new things. So I’ve downloaded a lot of ebooks and they are there on my desktop right now.
I keep everything I access a lot or want to read on my desktop. About a month ago, I had to shrink the icons so that everything could fit without bumping into each other.
Speed Reading
I bought the Evelyn Wood book. I have on the bookshelf. I just didn’t have the time to read it. If only I learned it before I read it. I have tried other methods of speed reading before and always gave up.
For one, there are advantages and disadvantages to reading faster. I want to become a better writer. So there are some books I want to read slow enough to absorb the rhythms and tone of the writer’s voice. Blasting along at 500 words per minute will not help me accomplish this goal. I want to hear my voice in my head repeating the words. I can learn to read faster but I am not sure if I can learn to listen that much faster.
For another, most of the stuff I want to read just for info is in digital format. If is has do with the internet and it’s printed on paper, it’s out of date before it was printed. It is a little different trying to speed read on a computer. I am damn sure not going to drag my finger down the center of my LCD screen, plus when I tried, I couldn’t see through the pretty color bubbles my finger made.
Audio Books
I listened to audio books religiously on the way to and back from work for a while. I wanted to learn how to invest and save some of the money I was making, make it work for me and being a hands on guy, I wouldn’t settle for a 401K. I wanted to learn how the stock market works.
But I ran into a issue. I am a limited tech guy. I am always on the internet, but I don’t have an Ipod. Mine is still called an MP3 player. I used it only for audio books. The issue: once you get to the middle of the book, it takes about ten minutes to fast forward to where I was at.
So I looked for MP3 players for audio books with some type of "start where I was last time" function. I never really found much. So if anyone has a solution to this let me know.
Rapid Reader Saves the Day
When I read a post over at Yaro Starak’s blog about a few worthwhile free reports where he recommended RapidReader, I thought, "Yeah, right."
But I tried it and I’ll be damned if I am not going to buy it after the free trial is up. Rapid Reader basically takes pdf files, word files, or test files and feeds them word by word onto the screen at whatever rate you choose.
I started out at 250 WPM. It was only a minute or so before I kicked it up to 300 WPM. And then I was up to 350 WPM. I think I will leave it there for a while.
It’s amazing how much reading material you can go through at this rate. I have already cleared two pdf books off of my desktop.
I learned to hit the spacebar every once and while to take notes. The spacebar stops the reader and hitting it again starts it back up.
There was one issue. I know that in Adobe PDF, the headers and footers are a separate entity in the page. I wish the reader could learn to skip them. Instead, it repeated them with every page.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. You can download a free, fully functional trial and then decide when you are done. If you have a lot of reading material to go through and it helps you out, then buy it. If not, no loss. That’s the good thing about shareware.
Category: Education, Journal | 
Tags: rapid reader, rapidreader, speed reading, speed reading software | 
I will definitely give this a try. Sitting down to read anything on the computer is like pulling teeth with me. There is just too much to do to finish what needs to be read without quitting half way through. If this could work with my feed reader it would be perfect.
That would be cool. I would go for that. I will check out.
I figured there was another option. I found this a while back. It’s a text to speech addon for Firefox.
http://clickspeak.clcworld.net/downloads.html
Hey Stephan!
I bought the EW course years ago and I worked on it some with my daughter. I’ve had some mediocre results from it…
You might consider something from “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss though.
He talks about reducing reading (which i can’t really see a reason to do - books have saved my life! literally, and figuratively!) and then too, he mentioned a technique I think maybe he created?!?
Not really sure about that…
He talks about scanning a line with your finger or a pencil - and reading only the third word from each end.
I’ve been doing that on the blogs I visit during my regular web crawls (using the cursor).
Now, my normal reading comprehension is quite good (i know that from the EW course!) and I gotta tell you, I know that this type of scanning reduces my comprehension some - it isn’t that bad though!
Give it a try (and read his book for that and WAY more interesting stuff)!
I don’t think I want to do EXACTLY what he does - I have totally different goals in life though too.
Let me know how it goes!
Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com
p.s. i used to have oodles of books going at once (something like 50 or so at one point) and yet, I get more reading done, doing something i just started this year.
i read whatever i want right before bed, usually for ‘pleasure’ and then, during the day, i read something for my brain - “The Millionaire Maker” is the current book. I read something like 5-6 books in January! i think i have averaged 1-2 per month most years (i keep track of every regular book i finish in a composition book, i’ve done it for years!) and that was reading one at a time.
for whatever reason, this is working for me.
you really want to make reading part of family time too IMHO - i would cozy up with my daughter on the couch A LOT! when she was growing up. she is an avid reader now. i always told her ‘if you don’t learn anything else, learn to read because if you do, you can learn anything else you want to learn.’
don’t give up your reading! it’s so important for so many reasons. it’s the quickest, least expensive way to ‘get away from it all’ even!
your reading evangelist, pam
[...] recently downloaded RapidReader to test out how fast I could read some PDF files layng around on my desktop. One of the files I [...]
I agree with pam - as I just finished the 4 hour workweek book. It was amazing. But this software looks great as well if you have to do a lot of reading.
Matt Ellsworth’s last blog post..Yicrosoft Directory - Say What?
For the MP3 player with the “start where I was last time” function.” you need to find one that offers bookmarkign features.
Any iPod will do it I believe, but I’m an anti iPod person and the easiest way to find a player that will work with bookmarks is to use audible’s tool - http://www.audible.com/adbl/store/deviceCenter/devices.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&showDType=mp3&whichMfgr=142 - just go to the URL, select the manufacturer you like and then peruse their available offerings.
Hope this helps?
S
Pam and Matt,
I will definitely have to get that book. I have considering it for a while. Haven’t bought it due to the whole “time to read” thing.
Stuart,
Thanks. I wouldn’t get the Ipod either. I will check out Audible’s site. I am basically looking for the cheapest player that has the feature, because it will only be used for that. I am not the type of person who has ear buds in his ear all the time.
[...] so amazed by what software can do sometimes that I forget to look around. I did this lately with RapidReader. My free trial period was over and I almost bought it. The software was so unique to me that I [...]
I first heard about Rapid Reader from Yaro as well, and I also got hooked! I love it. It only took a few days before I bumped the speed up to 700 words per minute for most of what I read, although for technical reading then I dial it down to 500-600 words per minute.
So, the iPod does everything you need, is the cheapest by amount of storage, etc etc, and you still won’t buy one?
iTunes 8 allows you to mark any file as an audiobook, which then allows not only bookmarking, but allows you to listen to books at a higher rate of speed using pitch shifting. If you have an iPod.
I am a visual person. I need to see the words. I taught myself from books and never learned much from teachers speaking. And I refuse to buy into Apple’s marketing. And being the tech guy in any room, I have dealt with other people’s Ipod headaches. They are not much different from other similar players that cost half as much.
you really want to make reading part of family time too IMHO