AppMonday: ReadQuick

The idea of speed reading isn’t for everyone, but if you yearn to get more reading done and there aren’t enough hours in a day, an app may well come to the rescue.

Available for iOS only, it’s a rather interesting little article collecting app called “ReadQuick”, and the name really gives away what this piece of software is all about.

That is, it’s an app designed to help you speed read, or more specifically, speed read articles you might be wanting to read from around the web, with the logic being that you might be reading these slowly by pronouncing the words in your head as you read them.

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This technique of reading is very common and is called “subvocalisation” or “auditory reassurance”, with the idea being that by speaking the words in your head instead of reading them quickly without applying the vocalised structure, you’re essentially wasting time.

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To get around this, ReadQuick attempts to force you into a new routine whereby the articles and stories you want to read are flashed on the screen word by word at a faster rate than you’d traditionally read at, and you can speed it up as you go, double tapping the screen to pause the story, speed up or slow down the system, and double tap to keep going.

Doing this, you’re forced to pull back on your internal monologue, speaking less in your head and more just reading, and reading quickly.

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To get the articles, ReadQuick can tap into various services you might already connect with, such as Instapaper and Pocket, and even Evernote, which is handy if you’re taking in notes and need to get through them quickly.

More useful, however, is an internal web browser which lets you browse websites using the “Add Article” section and make your way around the web using a web browser, adding notes with the little button in the bottom right hand corner. You can add articles this way, and even import articles via the clipboard, and this is really the best way of getting articles into ReadQuick.

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What’s unfortunate about ReadQuick is that it doesn’t integrate with either Safari or Chrome on iOS, though we suspect that’s more an issue with the operating system than the app itself.

You can browse the feature places to pull news from, but there aren’t many places, and even more unfortunate than a link from an iOS web browser to the app is a lack of RSS feeds that you can add. For instance, you can’t bring over articles from your favourite website immediately, meaning you’ll be forced to look up the articles you want to bring into ReadQuick manually, which is a bit of a pain.

Given the app is close to ten bucks, that makes this less of a big deal for us, though you may feel differently.

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For those people who want to get more reading done, however, ReadQuick does bring an interesting way to attempt to get more into your life, because there is only so much time in the world.

That being said, we like our internal monologue, and while ReadQuick did let us absorb more words at a faster rate, we felt our reading was a little more understandable when we weren’t using the app.

Of course, your mileage may vary, so if you’re at all curious to see if speed reading the web is for you, it might be worth checking out.

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