thoughtful post from leonard about findings

We want to make all the world's content more accessible, interoperable and valuable. Some call it Web 2.0, Web 3.0, the Semantic Web or the Giant Global Graph - we call our piece of it Calais.

Calais is a rapidly growing toolkit of capabilities that allow you to readily incorporate state-of-the-art semantic functionality within your blog, content management system, website or application.

whoa! awesomeness!

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) is a method of displaying information (generally text or images) in which the text is displayed word-by-word in a fixed focal position. Aside from a basic reading aid, RSVP is being researched as a tool to increase individual reading rates. RSVP is also being utilized for research in the fields of Visual Impairment, Dyslexia, perceptual and cognitive psychology. RSVP is available in software on multiple platforms and in many different languages worldwide.

Speeder Reader couples the notion of dynamic typography with the notion of the car as interface. A speed-reading protocol called RSVP (for Rapid Serial Visual Presentation) allows people to learn to read up to 2000 words per minute. This is because it flashes words or short phrases onto the screen in front of you, affixed in one spot; you don't have to move your eyes around a page to read.

Speeder Reader gives you a gas pedal to control your rate of speed-reading and a steering wheel to navigate between streams of text. You can also jump forward or backwards in the text (by sentence, paragraph, or chapter).

In Western culture, the act of driving is very personally empowering (just like reading!). By combining the driving interface with dynamic text, we're offering a model of reading as a medium that gets you places. Here's a preprint of the Computers and Graphics journal paper that goes into more detail on the design and technology behind Speeder Reader.

SPEEDER READER credits
Maribeth Back, Jonathan Cohen, Rich Gold

People have been distracted from reading for the better part of several generations now. And yet, we still read. If our web habits are any indicator, we read more than we used to. But the shape of that reading—the type—determines whether we lose ourself in that reading, or else skitter from one text to the next. Design a distracted reading experience, and you'll have distracted readers. Design for immersion—and, well, don't be surprised if it works.

Vacation reads: Instapaper queue (, Things Magazine back issue #20, and just bought @Khoi's "Ordering Disorder" on iBooks