NataliMorris
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Speed-reading app ReadQuick shrinks down for iPhone
How much do you read in a day? Is there a backed-up queue of articles, documents and stories that you'd tackle if you had more time -- or if you could read more quickly? ReadQuick, a US$4.99 iOS app produced by the husband and wife / TV journalist team of Clayton and Natali Morris and programmed by Pablo Quinterros, aims to up your reading speed gracefully. The new version adds iPhone support, a longstanding request from fans. The original version of ReadQuick, launched last year to generally solid reviews, was only available on the iPad. It features an accessible, sleek interface (if you like Instapaper, one of ReadQuick's content sources, you'll like the Wondersauce-designed RQ look) and the ability to adjust reading speed from the default 250 words per minute down to a plodding 100 WPM or up to a blazing 800 WPM. The app delivers stories from Pocket, Instapaper or a collection of featured specialist, news and tech sites in a very specific way: one - word - at - a - time. You get a preview of how long reading the story will take, helping to optimize your reading time. There's also a "timed playlist" feature, checking how long your full set of stories will take to read, and a statistics page with your reading performance. This chunked content delivery -- an implementation of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation, or RSVP -- has shown promise in some research contexts for improving reading speed without a proportional drop in comprehension. For me personally, RQ is a great way to enforce focus and attention on what I'm reading; if I look away, daydream or get distracted, I'm going to miss something. Aside from feeling like you can only blink one eye at a time, it's actually quite immersive. The iPhone version is just as effective as the iPad; in fact, the smaller screen makes the single-word UI seem more appropriate. ReadQuick is a solid combination of brain training and handy story aggregation. For the cost of a grande latte, you can try to widen your personal information bandwidth, and who couldn't use an upgrade?
Growing up Geek: Natali Morris
Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have CNBC technology contributor, Natali Morris. These days I spend more of my time raising geeks than growing up as one. I gave birth to my daughter just seven weeks ago, so there is little time to geek out, but the force is still there. Temporarily dormant. I am a TV journalist who specializes in geek, as a technology contributor to CNBC. I got an early start in television. I was Miss Fremont 1984. Maybe you recognize me from the parade float with Sylvester and Tweety Bird? No? Odd. That's me on the left with my younger sister on the children's show Romper Room in 1984. Question: When we talk about my geeky childhood, do we mean that I had special geeky talents? Because I'm not sure I was a geek as much as I was a nerd. I was a rule follower. An overachiever. I always got the best grades in my science classes, had my term papers written weeks in advance, and always kept my textbooks covered with brown bag paper the way school policy required. I also had braces and headgear. And bangs. So what do you think? Geek or nerd? Or idiot? Actually no, I didn't always follow the rules. I used to cheat on the Nintendo Power Pad by pounding on the pressure sensors with my hands instead of my feet when I was feeling lazy. I used the code to get 30 extra lives on Contra. Although is it really cheating if it is built into the game? But I digress.
