Part of the success of Twitter lies with its brevity. 140 characters is easy to read with a quick glance. But it's also possible to quickly read and absorb much longer texts -- e-mails from mom, long-winded co-worker rants, even whole textbooks -- if you know a thing or two about speed reading.

For some background check out our how to on speed reading, but if that strikes you as a little too much effort, don't worry you can improve your reading speed by taking a few tips from Twitter.

===Consider the interface===

Aside from brevity, Twitter is notable for its clean, white interface. To improve your reading speed you might want to replicate the same, uncluttered, distraction free environment. 

Reading a long article online? Look for a link to the print version, which typically strips away sidebars, advertisements and other distractions, leaving you with a simple column of text that's easier to digest.

===The power of the snippet===

Skimming through the average news site is a chore, dozens of images, videos and other clutter compete for your attention. The solution is to feed your favorite sites into a news reader where you can quickly scan a column of headlines to find what interests you.

Have a look at our how to on news readers to get up and running with any of the many free news readers available on the desktop and web.

===Use Twitter===

Twitter isn't just a way to keep up with friends, it can also be used as a kind of real-time news reader. Follow your favorite news sources on Twitter for quick, easy to scan headlines with links to the full text.

=== Future Outlook ===

While it'd be nice to think the future will offer Matrix-style brain dumps -- need to understand Kung fu? There's an app for that -- but that's probably a good ways off. More realistic are text-to-speech converters that can read your important e-mail, news and other data, summarize it and give you quick synopsis. 

artwork: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loomer/299579768/