BuddyBuzz

BuddyBuzz is an ingenious way to read text quickly on the small screen of a mobile phone. Using a 'less is more' approach, the software flashes up one word at a time, rather than chunks of text. You can control the speed of the text (words per minute) and it can - for some users - actually be faster than the traditional mode for reading - presumably partly due to the fact that you don't have to perform all those tiresome 'saccades' or repeatedly find the start of a new line. God knows, that can be a chore.

Obviously this style of presentation isn't for everyone - some folks may not enjoy staring fixedly at one small spot, for example. Something of an oversight not to have a demo on their website, I feel. My own experience of this style of reading was with a repurposed version of Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe (A really fun novel you can download for free, in numerous formats, here). It's be one of those aforementioned formats, but I'm not sure which. Good luck with that.

Anyway, hopefully my phone will support this. I'm going to download it and give it a try. Oh, I should mention that you can  subscribe to various blog feeds including Reuters and CNET. Not that many options at the moment since it is still in early development phase. It has been developed at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, which sounds like a fun place to work.

Comments

[Roger Cullman]

Hey Rik,

Went to school with Cory Doctorow. Small world, in'nit? I'd try BuddyBuzz, but I don't use text messaging on my phone.

I love that Murmur concept. Spent about 15 minutes on my cell on my way home the other day, listening to stories about a guy who used to work at the Victory Café on Markham Street.

Cheerio from Toronto
Roger

[Matt Sephton]

I used to have a program on my Atari ST that used this one word at a time method of displaying text. It worked well once you got over the initial weirdness hurdle.

Another nice way of reading text on a Mac is Tofu http://homepage.mac.com/asagoo/tofu/

[Roger]

Cory Doctorow is doing a free reading in Toronto on Monday afternoon at Baka bookshop, if you're interested and/or in the area.

I just learned that word SACCADE from an animator, used to describe our eye movements when watching movies.

As an avid Scrabbler, I know the word from its anagram: CASCADE.

Roger