I’ve actually blogged about this in the past, though I didn’t know this term exists. It’s a way of reading material that allows you to absorb text much faster than the typical words on a page approach – basically an RSVP app streams the words at you very quickly, one word at a time. I’ve shown this to folks and most of the time they’re non-plussed, partly I suspect because it’s so different from the typical reading experience. Trust me though, it really can lead to faster intake of printed materials. If you don’t believe me, take a moment to review some research on the subject [.pdf]. If you’re on windows, you can grab a copy of an app I found on sourceforge, called dictator, which is Python based but has a complete pre-packaged installer for windows. Other OS’s will have to monkey with it to get it working on their OS – basically all you’ll need is Python (you already have it on OSX) and wxPython, which you can get here. I’ve been using this to stream manuals and documentation to myself. In a way it’s like ….passive absorbtion, like the stories you used to hear about people who taught themselves by playing tapes while they slept – my comprehension and retention is not as good as if I had sat and studied the manual in the traditional page-turning manner, but I find that I have these ‘aha!’ moments where I suddenly realize I know the answer to ‘x’, without having really read about ‘x’ before. Basically this is a great time saving device for things you need to have a passing knowledge of. It’s also great for those guilty pleasure books, like a tom clancy novel you can’t find yourself justifying the time it would take to actually read it, but that you can spend 2-3 hours sucking in.

If you can’t get dictator working on your OS of choice, you can also check out jrsvp, a java-based rsvp client. I had trouble getting this working correctly but it’s under rapid development and I was less incented to tinker with it since I already had Dictator up and running.