Think about all the books you’ve read throughout your life. Wouldn’t it be nice to organize them all? If you love reading and are looking for a way to catalog your books online then LibraryThing.com is definitely for you.
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.
If you do a lot of reading online and use Firefox as your browser, this application is a must. The RSVP Reader is an add-on to the Firefox browser and makes reading on the computer much faster.
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.
This post will be part of a series I will try to do every day on cool websites and applications that I find. Most of these will be reading or productivity related with an occasional divergence to something completely random.
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-
