Can "Bionic Reading" increase reading speed and comprehension?

Have you tried Bionic Reading? It's a patented and trademarked process that ostensibly makes text easier to grok by boldfacing the first few letters of each word.

From the website:

Bionic Reading revises texts so that the most concise parts of words are highlighted. This guides the eye over the text and the brain remembers previously learned words more quickly. Bionic Reading is a reading system that supports the reading flow. The eye is guided through the text by means of typographic highlights. With the interplay of "Fixation", "Saccade" and "Opacity" visual stimuli can be transferred to the text, which decisively change the typeface.

The company offers free tools, including a Chrome extension, to convert ordinary text into bionic text. I feel like it does make it easier to read text online. Here's what the first paragraphs of Flatland look like after getting the Bionic treatment: