In undergrad, I went to a speed reading seminar put on by the Psych Students Association. Basically, the instructor said that if you just kept training yourself to read more and more “parts” at a time – words then phrases then sentences then paragraphs then pages, you'd be able to speed read books and other materials in no time flat because you'd learn to grab keywords from each “part” and get just as much meaning as if you'd done a careful, thorough reading. The instructor did caution that it required ongoing practice and I think I lasted about a week before I was on to some other flight of fancy to distract myself. Still, that memory came back when I heard about Spreeder.com which bills itself as an online speed-reading application.