Streamline Online Research with Summarize

· by · Tips

If you spend a lot of time researching and reviewing information on the Internet, odds are youive discovered thereis far more data available than you can ever read through. Thanks to a little used feature in Mac OS X called Services, you can reduce the time you spend reading each article by taking advantage of Summarize. Summarize works by analyzing the content in a document and reducing it to a synopsis thatis just the length you want.

For this example, Iill use Brad Cookis TMO feature article about the University of Wisconsinis contest to hack a Mac. Hereis how to take the story and condense it down to a short synopsis:

    - Click and drag to highlight the body of the article.
    - Choose Safari > Services > Summarize.
    - Once your condensed article appears in the Summary window, you can use the Summary Size slider to increase or decrease the story length.
    - Use the Sentence and Paragraph radio buttons to either summarize based on sentences or paragraphs. Creating a summary based on sentences tends to create shorter summary documents.
    - To save your summary as a TextEdit document, choose File > Save As.


Control the length of your document summary with the Summary Size slider.

The Summary Service works with Safari, TextEdit, Preview, and most any other application that supports Services. By experimenting with the Summary settings, you can create easy to read document synopsis and save yourself a little research time.

Jeff Gamet

Jeff Gamet

Jeff is the Mac Observer's Managing Editor, and co-host of the Apple Context Machine podcast. He is the author of "The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X" from Peachpit Press, and writes for several design-related publications. Jeff has presented at events such as Macworld Expo, the RSA Conference, and the Mac Computer Expo. In all his spare time, he also co-hosts the We Have Communicators podcast, and makes guest appearances on several other podcasts, too. Jeff dreams in HD.

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