One of the most impressive features, was the option to view your books in a “cover view” style, an obvious takeaway from the iPhone, but impressive nonetheless. Below is a screenshot of that view.

Like LibraryThing.com, GuruLib.com draws its information from Amazon and other places so you can easily find your books. Both of the sites offer a great way to organize and catalog your books.

Know of any other websites that might be interesting to readers? Share them with us by adding them to the comments.

I came across this site recently which allows you too easily search for books you have read or plan to read and add them to your catalog. The site’s search goes through Amazon and even the Library of Congress to find the book you specified.
The site allows you to tag your books, see what others are reading and make notes to your book. There are many other functionalities that I am still exploring, but from a first impression LibraryThing.com seems great for anyone that loves to read and wants to keep track and organize their books.

You simply highlight what you want to read, set your reading speed and press play. The words are then blinked in groups on the screen at the speed you set.

RSVP stands for “Rapid Serial Visual Presentation” and the methodology behind it was originally developed by the U.S. Air Force to train pilots in recognizing enemy planes at the blink of an eye.

Although the technology is still fairly new, initial research at Wichita State University is showing the technology to be pretty promising in helping people not only read faster, but also comprehend better.

Here’s a webinar I did demonstrating the RSVP Reader Add-on for Firefox. Know of any other RSVP Readers? Feel free to add them to the comments.

-Paul-

Earlier this week I came across, ReadBag.com. This is a great website if you do a lot of reading online. If you’re like me, and do a lot of reading online, sometimes you don’t have the time to read everything in one sitting. You might resort to bookmarking the link in your browser, emailing it to yourself or adding it to some social bookmarking site.

Readbag.com puts nifty spin on bookmarking while making it ridiculously easy. Below is a quick demo I did to show you some of the cool features.

Know of any other cool websites for readers? Let us all know by commenting on this post.
-Paul-

The site now includes some speed reading webinars that are free to watch. Please check them out when you get a chance. We’ll be adding more webinars in the coming months so make sure you bookmark the site, or subscribe to the RSS feed on this blog. If you’re not familiar with how RSS works, it’s actually pretty simple. Here’s a Wikipedia article that gives a good explanation of it.

The site also includes articles on speed reading tips and strategies. We will be adding more in the coming days and you can subscribe to the articles feed as well.

I hope you find the website helpful and please feel free to add comments to this post on what you’d like to see on the website in the future.

Paul

Tip #1 - Start Using Your Hand to Read

Your hand is the most useful tool you have when it comes to speed reading. Because your eyes are naturally attracted to motion, using your hand helps to guide your eyes. This makes concentration a little easier because anytime you are pointing to something, you are calling attention to it. It’s probably happened to every reader at one point or another where you just start staring at a paragraph. Using your hand forces your eyes to keep up and your brain to pay attention.

Of course you don’t have to specifically use your hand. If it is more comfortable, you can use your finger instead of your entire hand. And if you have fat, cheesestick fingers like me, you can just use a pen or pencil to guide your eyes along the page.

Although using your hand is always mentioned as a basic speed reading tip, some people make the mistake in trying to use their hand by moving it down each page. Since it is nearly impossible to read this way with very wide margins, it’s a better idea to move your hand across the page, from left to right, line by line.

If you’re uncomfortable using your hand, it’s probably just because you don’t normally do it. The more you start doing it, the more comfortable it will feel. Once you get used to using your hand you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it before.

Tip #2 - Change Your Speed

Although using your hand will help you tremendously, you need to make sure you learn how to regulate your speed. Obviously, if you go too fast you won’t get any comprehension. And if you go too slow, you’re not being efficient.

Some people believe that all words are created equal. But if you’ve read George Orwell’s, Animal Farm, you’ll probably believe that all words are created equal, but some are more equal than others. The same is true for sentences and paragraphs.

Most people read everything at the same speed, reading word-by-word, as if each word is just as important as the next. The truth is they aren’t. Have you ever added a few pointless paragraphs to a paper in high school just so you could make the 2 page minimum? Many other people do the same.

When the material starts getting easy, or you feel there is some fluff that you’re reading, go a little faster with your hand. When the material gets hard, or when you sense a very important point is coming, you need to slow down. This is exactly what you do when you drive. You might go 90 miles per hour on a straight road, but you don’t do it on a sharp turn.

The easiest way to start doing changing your speed is by slowing down at the beginning of a paragraph and speeding up through the rest of it. This is because the main idea is in many cases (but not always) the first sentence. If you get used to doing this, you’ll eventually get into a nice flow when reading, speeding up sometimes and slowing down at others.

Tip #3 - Preview Your Material

Before doing any kind of strenuous exercise, it would probably make sense to warm up. The same goes for reading. Previewing your material is like warming up. If you’re reading a textbook chapter, flip through and look at all the headings and sub-headings. Read the introduction. Read the conclusion. Then read the chapter beginning to end.

Why is this helpful? If you’re reading informational material, previewing what you’re about to read will give you an idea of where you are going. It’s like traveling with a map. It helps to have one to avoid getting lost.

Previewing can also help you read through the material quicker and with better comprehension. This is because you’ve prepared your brain for what you were about to read. And if you’ve gotten used to changing up your speed with your hand as you read, you’ll know exactly where you need to slow down and speed up.

My goal in writing this blog is offer useful tips to those interested in learning speed reading without all the ridiculous hype. And since speed reading is a productivity tool, I also plan to sharing various websites that I find to be helpful in boosting my productivity and efficiency.

There are a ton of interesting websites out there (Web2.0 is the new buzz word of the year) and I hope to separate for you the ones that can actually make you more productive in your everyday life.

This blog will be geared mostly toward college students and business professionals, but I welcome any other readers that are interested in learning more about speed reading. Especially those with a passion for reading.

Paul