ReadPal is an interesting looking piece of software. It claims that it lets you read faster than you might otherwise on screen.
I’ve had a look, and I think that it could have some uses – the first problem I ran into was the fact that it only integrates with IE, not with Firefox (didn’t even bother trying with Flock). I also wasn’t keen on the fact that it wanted to run at start up – though I can see that would be useful if you decided to use it a lot. Images don’t get incorporated – which could be an issue if they are vital to the text. Another big problem is that it doesn’t currently work with .pdf files. I’ve also found another issue – they’ve supplied it with several files; but no way of bookmarking where you have got to. So, though I have started Huckleberry Finn, I can’t get back to the same point again, without remembering where I got to (you can zoom to say 23% – but you’d have to remember where you’d got to).
I tested it with a Word Document – and I can see the powers that it could have.
If it worked with Firefox, and .pdf – and, ideally allowed the user to select chunks of text (as ReadPlease does for example) – then I think that it would be a very powerful tool. I’d also be interested (long term) to see if they have a version that works with a PDA.
So, in summary – good idea, but needs further work.
Via: Lisa Valentine