Most business and professional people spend a great deal of their time trying to keep up with all of their "must" reading. This is the critical information you need to stay current in your job and in your industry. In today's work place, the ease of electronic distribution has had the effect of loading more reading into the work week. The good news is, that because the material is distributed electronically, you can now use RapidReader to cut your reading time to a fraction. That means that instead of printing it out and lugging it home, the software can help you spend less time reading and more time putting that information to good use. Of course anything you can read in RapidReader you can also annotate and Highlite in RapidReader. This will make short work of later review for meetings or reports.
(Please see Using the Paragraph View in the help files for information about how to open files and web pages in RR)

Every day, more and more professional Journals and publications are being put online. Some are these are subscription or fee based, others are free. Below is the address for the Stanford "Highwire" project which lists most online medical and scientific journals.
Http://highwire.stanford.edu

There are other library projects that offer a similar service of aggregating online journals. Some are listed at SoftOlogy IdeaWorks Central Internet Library http://www.centralinternetlibrary.com

You can download a sample of a Journal Article in RapidReader below

NOTE: Many of the journals are formatted as HTML web pages. You can read these in RapidReader directly from Internet Explorer. Other online journals are only available in PDF format. These can be converted and read with RapidReader PRO*.

With RapidReader you can streamline much of your work and literally cut hours off the time it takes to create a paper from your research on the Internet or corporate materials.

Aside from the reading speed advantage, RapidReader will allow you to capture the text of web pages, save them as RapidReader documents to easily work off-line. This means that you can quickly load any pages that may be of interest directly to your desktop and later use RapidReader to review them for useful material. Using RapidReader's markup tools means you can add your own Notes directly into the web page for future reference and Highlite text of interest. Then you can copy your Notes and easily extract quotes using the Highliter tool to paste directly into your paper.

With RapidReader you have a fast, efficient, flexible format to put the materials you need, from research to writing right at your fingertips.

What's more, you can then accelerate the Proofreading and Editing process.

You can download a sample of a research paper in RapidReader below.

NOTE: Much of your online research will be formatted as HTML web pages. You can read these in RapidReader directly from Internet Explorer. Other online materials may only be available in PDF format. These can be downloaded, converted and read with RapidReader PRO*.

When a document is saved in RapidReader format it can be easily circulated among colleagues as an e-mail attachment. This RapidReader file format is a major time-saving tool that benefits every stage of the collaborative process. Colleagues can quickly read, review and share relevant content. With the User-Note feature the team can add their own comments as the document circulates. Text can be Highlited for emphasis or to use as "pull quotes". As the project nears completion RapidReader becomes a powerhouse for proofreading and final editing.

RapidReader makes every step in a team environment, from conception to approval, faster and far more efficient.

You can download a sample of RapidReader as GroupWare below

NOTE: Materials available in PDF format can be converted and read with RapidReader PRO*.

Whether you're in negotiations or reviewing legacy documents to "come up to speed" for a new client , contracts and business agreements can be very time consuming to read and annotate. The specificity required in these agreements means that they can run to hundreds of pages. The importance of the document language accurately reflecting the mutual understanding of terms has significant ramifications for your business. Consequently, reviewing and revising from a paper copy or even a word processor document is a laborious and exacting process.

Now, with any electronic document, you can use the power of the computer to accelerate your reading and annotating with RapidReader. You can create "User-Notes" and Highlited text to record your changes and then easily embed them in the original document or copy.

You can download a sample of an annotated contract in RapidReader below

One of the most time intensive tasks that a teacher faces is grading essay papers. Now there's a new tool available to help.

At RapidReader speeds, it's amazing how obvious poor writing or factual errors become. At several hundred words per minute, awkward language, grammatical errors and even "filler and padding" stand out in high relief as a result of the flow of language with the RapidReader "speech mimic" algorithm.

As education moves toward requiring that papers be submitted in electronic form, the job of grading actually becomes more difficult for the teacher. The teacher has two choices, slower reading speed on the computer screen or printing out the document and dealing with stacks of paper. RapidReader dramatically enhances the inherent efficiency of electronic documents by delivering the power of the computer to accelerate reading and streamline the grading process. RapidReader is a powerful time saver, reducing review and per paper grading time to a fraction.

You can also communicate your comments to the student with RR's markup capabilities like User-Notes and Highlites.

Finally, with RapidReader there's a way that being in the electronic domain delivers the teacher the assistance, speed and efficiency that the medium promises.

You can download a sample of a graded paper in RapidReader below

One of the principle requirements of any kind of learning is practice. When it comes to knowledge building, the psychophysiology of learning tells us that there is simply no substitute for repeated exposure to the information we want to remember. This is particularly true of vocabulary building and other rote learning tasks. That's why "flash cards" were invented in the first place. To create a time efficient  tool for practice. RapidReader uses computer assisted technology to build on this premise. When you're able to sit back and read at several hundred words per minute, multiple exposures to words becomes easy and learning is accelerated.

Using RapidReader for vocabulary review, a student can easily be exposed to each entry three or more times in the time it previously took to read it once. This of course means shorter study time. In addition to the benefit of multiple exposures in less time, the speed of the dynamic display helps the student to maintain focused attention which in turn increases retention. With RapidReader you can create a powerful immersive experience to encourage retention in far less time than with traditional materials.

Below you'll find an optimized format for creating RapidReview for vocabulary. With it you can create a lesson which will give the student multiple exposures in one sitting.

You can download the sample RapidReview vocabulary "flashcards" for you to use as a model

In the class room, the challenge for every teacher is to not only convey the required information but equally importantly, provide context and meaning for the student. In this day of standardized testing, oversight and compliance, it is becoming increasingly difficult for teachers to meet the administrative demands and still provide the individual attention that students want and need.  Historically, when time and resource demands on people became overwhelming, technology has emerged to help. RapidReader is the kind of assistive technology that can provide a tool to give the student and the teacher more ways to streamline the use of the Internet and other electronic resources to accelerate core learning objectives and make time in the class room more productive.

One way to use RapidReader to assist both teaching and learning is to provide a means of accelerating the learning of "core information" in advance of classroom discussion. For instance an historical narrative with names, places, dates and events is primary to understanding the deeper issues of the political or social context of the subject.  RapidReader excels at this kind of transfer of factual information in a fast, engaging manner to prepare the student for deeper discussion in the class room.

You can easily create a lesson from web pages you've found or from electronic documents already in your curriculum materials

You can customize the lesson and communicate with the student with your own User-Notes as well as Highlite passages of importance. 

In the sample you'll see the use of Notes and Highlites as reinforcers.

Your Notes and Highlites can themselves be saved as a separate text file for them to use as a summary or test review. This is a powerful tool for preparation for standardized testing.  

Below are instructions on how you can easily and quickly build RapidReader lessons for accelerated knowledge building.

You can download the sample lesson in RapidReader with Notes and Highlites below

There are thousands of e-book texts available for free on the Internet. Among them you will find some the books most frequently assigned as required reading. Most of these are classic works that are in the public domain and represent some of the greatest minds and talents in human history. There are dozens of online libraries which contain collections of great literature, historical or political reference, religious works, scientific discovery, and children's reading to name a few. 

Until now these electronic books offered a challenge to  the reader. The process of reading on-screen is comparatively slow, uncomfortable and laborious. This in turn has blunted the usability of the tremendous wealth of online materials. RapidReader changes all that by using the power of the computer to assist in reading on screen. By offering the option of the RapidReader mode in addition to the conventional reading experience within one software product, the reader now gets the choice of how they wish to read electronic books.

For the teacher, the markup features contained within RapidReader allow for building a customized lesson plan within the book itself. With the download of an e-book the teacher can create a customized RapidReader Edition which focuses the approach to the material to be  consistent with the purpose of the class. The teacher can reach the student directly with commentary in User-Notes attached to pages and Highlite text for emphasis.  Other material such as "food for thought" questions or even quizzes can be included right in the text.

SoftOlogy IdeaWorks maintains a library portal of  on-line works. It is called the Central Internet Library (www.centralinternetlibrary.com) it's a work constantly in progress and provides access to both general and specialized libraries including the Gutenberg Project and the University of Pennsylvania e-library.

We will also maintain a growing selection of e-books in RapidReader (.r2d) format on this site for our Beta Reviewers.

You can download a sample chapter of a "Teachers Edition" e-book in RapidReader below

Of course, on a daily basis you can use RapidReader to shorten the amount of time you have to spend reading and studying. But there's another great way to use RapidReader when it comes time to do that last minute review for Exams. You can create a "crib sheet" using RapidReader to "brief" yourself at high speed with the information you'll need. Because RapidReader assists you to read at several times the average speed, you'll be able to to get more repetitions of the required information just prior to taking the test and keep it fresh in your mind.

You can easily build a RapidReview document from your own class notes or excerpts from the text of electronic class materials. You can even create a "drill sheet" will multiple repetitions of your notes to blast through. Remember, that at RapidReader speeds you can get many exposures to the material in the same time it would take you to read it just once with traditional methods. Then if you wish, you can Highlite text or add Notes to your RapidReview document. Now you've got a accelerated quick-study on your laptop computer.

You can download a sample of a test prep in RapidReader below