My bad, forgot I was talking to the hacker news crowd. The point I was trying to make is that we understand that it's a trust issue, and we're taking the steps we need to get that trust.
I did use something like that at the last company I worked for. Something we're looking into (probably more long term) is building out an API that can play well with others.
Yep, we've gotten a lot of suggestions regarding 1) todo lists and 2) # hours a task took. We're trying to figure out the best way to do this since we're trying to preserve the simplicity of this site, while still giving users power options. Thanks for the feedback.
1. We're looking to use other methods of input (im, email, etc) - not sure about using twitter since it's out in the public (whereas companies probably don't want that)
2. Yep. We're first focusing on companies because that's the one we're most familiar with. That being said, there's no reason a student couldn't use it the way it stands now ...
I'm not sure (since there are so many alternatives out there for that kind of thing). Our primary goal is to keep it as lightweight and easy to use as possible. That being said, it's something we'll think about.
Later on we're planning on charging managers/companies that want to use this as a tool to manage multiple teams and employees. We'll never charge the users that are using it as an individual account.
I'm the other cofounder. That's something we're working to alleviate concerns for - we've added hackersafe and verisign (and truste's on the roadmap) so the data is secure and the session is encrypted. It's definitely something we want our users to be comfortable with, and something we're working on.
Just thought I'd weigh in since I'm the author of the app. I was pleasantly surprised to see my little pet project from a couple years ago make it onto hacker news, since this is the first site I go to to read my daily news.
Anyway, the intended purpose for spreeder is not to supplement your reading (I personally don't use it for that purpose), but rather as a training tool. The one (and probably only) thing I got out of any speed reading training course was that there's a lot of redundancy when reading texts.
People "read" text in their head (subvocalize), which slows down reading (vs just seeing + understanding it). Also, most people tend to reread a lot as well since they're not focusing.
Spreeder is meant to be a trainer of sorts. When words are flashing at a high speed in front of you, you're forced to focus more on what's going on, and you don't get a chance to reread things you missed. So you're naturally inclined to pay more attention. When I want to train, I read at a speed where I can barely keep up - it helps eliminate me naturally trying to subvocalize the words in my mind.
In the end state, I've found it's helped me in my normal reading. I don't actually use spreeder to read my daily dose of internet stuff, but I spend less time in the unfocused state so I get more out of it.