Friday, November 21, 2008

Another reason to get a Mac


Have you ever been reading a long article and wished you could somehow magically make it shorter or at least get to the point? With "Summarize", a Mac OSX service, you can do this easily. In many Mac applications such as Safari, Pages, and TextEdit, you can select a block of text and click the application name in the menu bar > Services > Summarize.

Once you're in the service, you can easily shorten the selected text by moving the slider between 1% and 100%. As you move it, the text will magically get shorter, while at the same time keeping the basic meaning of the text that you originally selected. The service is amazingly accurate.

Now, if only we can figure out a way to apply it to meetings.

Thanks to The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Neat video of Leo Laporte demonstrating it here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a great, under-appreciated feature of Mac OS.

Anonymous said...

I just tried 'Summarize' on this blog entry. How's that for self-referential useage!
As I moved the slider towards 0%, the cuts made were very logical.

(Summarize is available in Safari for selected text. If you're using another browser, copy and paste the text into TextEdit to try out the Summarize service.))

Anonymous said...

I consider myself a Mac power user and never was aware of this service. It's a keeper.