iReadFast for Mac

A quicker way to read documents and emails

I remember watching Johnny 5 in Short Circuit (1 and 2) screaming "input, input" and thinking "I wish I could read as fast as him".

iReadFast can't promise to turn you into Johnny 5 but it is a speed-reading program, which aims at speeding-up the time it takes you to read a document. It is quite a weird application to use for the first time, however. You simply paste text into it, press play, and iReadFast plays the text word-by-word on a black background. The idea is that you still absorb the words as if reading them off the page but at a quicker rate. In reality however, it's like watching some kind of word slideshow.

The developer claims that "In no time iReadFast unleashes the power of our brain freeing it from the tasks that limit reading speed. Our brain can focus on the comprehension of the text rather than deal with mechanical tasks like repositioning eyes from one word to the next and keeping track of the point you reached in the text." While this may be scientifically proven, iReadFast seems to me a rather strange way to read documents and emails. If you do find it useful, there are a few added controls that allow you to change the speed of the text scrolling and the angle that the words appear.

If you're convinced by the principles of speed reading then you may find something of use in iReadFast. Anyone else will just see a weird text slideshow.