Speedylicious Pro
I am an avid reader, always have been. What I read has changed dramatically, however. These days, I read mostly work stuff. Email, journal articles, memos, forms, handbooks- you name it, I read it. But I’m not the fastest reader in the world, especially when I’m not reading for pleasure. And because I’ve always wanted to learn how to read faster, I was excited to take a look at James Massey’s Speedylicious Pro. Speedylicious Pro is an app that works by flashing text- one word at a time- on the screen in rapid bursts that can be set by the reader. It’s known as Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) and it is said that by reading this way over a period of time, a person can significantly increase their reading speed and rate of comprehension.
Most of the speedreading applications available today only allow you to read items from a preset library database. They have bookshelves full of stuff like Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ or Mark Twain’s ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’. There’s nothing wrong with that and they’re great works, but if you’re like me, you’re probably far too busy trying to get through the all the other stuff you’re required to read to have time to read about how to defeat an enemy or fill your head with the exploits of some bratty kid.
Speedylicious Pro can sync with Readitlaterlist and Del.icio.us, so any article bookmarked with either of those services can be automatically imported into Speedylicious Pro the next time the app is opened. This means you can read online content at any time, offline. That feature alone makes it worth the $2.99 sale price, since there aren’t all that many apps that are able to do that.
I did have my problems using Speedylicious Pro. Articles I deleted using the ReadItLater Free app still appeared on my Speedylicious list after syncing, and syncing between ReadItLater and Speedylicious proved to be a continual source of frustration. Articles I bookmarked to send to my ReadItLater list via MobileRSS, TwitBird Pro, and Mobile Safari, were hit or miss; sometimes the text would import just fine and sometimes it wouldn’t. This was the case even when I could see that the article had been successfully brought into ReadItLater and could be viewed through the ReadItLater Free app.
On the plus side, Speedylicious Pro allows the reader to edit imported articles. This is a good feature to have, since so many web articles are filled with text that isn’t relevant to the article itself. It isn’t the developer’s fault, but it does get more than a little annoying to have to constantly edit the beginning and end of articles. The only workaround is to bookmark the article via the ‘print this article’ option most newspaper and magazine articles offer, as the page that’s generated there lacks the junk text.
Speedylicious Pro is a solid addition to the speedreading app offering. A couple of enhancements come to mind forme, though. Adding Instapaper as one of the article sync sources would be great, as would the ability to clear the reading list.
If you’re interesting in learning how to read faster, Speedylicious Pro is certainly worth your consideration.
iTunes Link- Speedylicious Pro
Version 1.0.0
Tested on iPod Touch 3.1.3
