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From:
peter altschul <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
peter altschul <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 3 Oct 2011 21:25:45 -0500
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How To Read The Link-Crazy Web Without Going Insane
  BY Kevin Purdy
  Feel like your attention span operates at an inverse rate to 
your broadband speed? Here's how you can give the good stuff on 
the web the attention it deserves.
  The kind of long-form reading you can do right now, on your 
computer or mobile phone, at the speed of a Google search, 
involves animated advertisements, multi-page articles smooshed 
into strange margins, and lots of attention-grabbing links to 
outside material.  The kind of reading you want to do gives the 
material undivided attention, puts you in touch with your 
thoughts, and is much easier on your eyes.
  There are, thankfully, tools to bridge the divide between the 
gratification of the web and the illumination of actual reading.
  Strip down and simplify your text
  The inconvenience and distraction of web reading has been 
addressed by a few different web geeks and entrepreneurs in a 
mostly similar fashion.  If you don't mind reading on a screen, 
but want that screen far less cluttered, these are the tools to 
turn to:
  * ininInstapaper The king of clean text and convenience.  First 
you drag Marco Arment "Read Later" tool into your browser's 
favorites/bookmarks collection.  Then, whenever you see an 
article you want to read click the button.  This will save your 
stories at the Instapaper website (which requires registration), 
and allow it be to read anytime via an iPhone or iPad app, or on 
your Kindle.  One tip: view the article in a single page or 
printer-friendly version before you tap the Read Later button.
  * ininReadability As a pure text-and-images reading tool, 
Readability does a good job, and it's easy to install on most 
browsers.  To read articles later, though, and feel better about 
stripping out advertising, Readability asks for a minimum of $5 
per month from readers, which it's trying as hard as it can to 
send to great content creators--publications, bloggers, whomever.  
If you're using the latest version of Safari, some of 
Readability's features are built into a new "Reader" mode
  * ininRead It Later A simple app that lets you do what it says, 
on nearly any device you have with a screen.  Send good reads 
right to your Kindle.  Got a Kindle? Thinking about getting one 
of those sleek new Kindle Fire tablets? Do some quality reading 
on your thin little screen, both hand-picked and expertly 
curated.  Delivereads takes compelling content from around the 
web and pushes it wirelessly to your Kindle, with no effort on 
your part.  Tinderizer makes it a one-click process to send web 
articles to your Kindle, where email and Wikipedia and Twitter 
won't be able to find you for a while.
  Have your computer read any text out loud to you
  Computer-generated voices have improved, to the point where 
only the occasional five-dollar word or proper name gets a bit 
mangled.  If you've got an article you want to get through, but 
just don't have time not to double-task, enlist your headphones 
or computer speakers.
  On a Mac, you can open up System Preferences, hit the Speech 
section, and look in the "Text to Speech" tab.  There's a box 
there to "Speak selected text when the key is pressed," which you 
should tick on, and then a "Set key" button, where you choose the 
keyboard combo you want to start reading what you see on your 
screen.  Windows users can either dig into their "Ease of Access" 
settings in the Control Panel, or try an app like Balabolka Both 
apps work best after your web reading has been run through one of 
the cruft strippers mentioned earlier.
  Speed up your audiobooks (or any spoken word files)
  If your literary-minded friends think that audiobooks aren't 
really reading, they're really going to flip when they hear that 
you've been clipping through books at nearly twice the standard 
speed.  It's easy, but not quite obvious, to change the playback 
speed on any file on any iPhone, iPod, iPad or in Windows Media 
Player.  On Android phones, both the official Audible app, and 
Osplay let you cut faster through your self-imposed reading list.
  Copyright B) 2011 Mansueto Ventures LLC.  All rights reserved.


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