Summarize Feature on Mac OS X
I recently discovered a slick feature of the Mac OS X system while watching a MacBreak IPTV podcast on the Summarize feature embedded in the Services menu item of the operating system. This little application is quite the powerful little tool.
To use it, you simply fire up a program that is considered "Mac" software (which means programs like Firefox may not work with the Summarize service), highlight some text, and then go to the Menu item 'Safari' (or whatever program you're currently in) -> 'Services' -> 'Summarize' and the system automatically populates a new window that will pop up with your highlighted text. The pop-up Summary window then automatically tries to determine how much text it can cut out to provide an adequate summary, and presents it to you. A slider at the bottom of this window allows the user to dynamically select how long or short the summary is, and whether to grab sentences or paragraphs from the text to summarize the information.
So, as an example, let's take a rather long text from one of my favorite sites, Squashed Philosophers, and see how it does:
"You are not making much progress" He said, "Look, there are some good things which we want for their own sake, like pleasure, and some which we want for themselves and their consequences, like wisdom and sight.
..."When we have simple beauty in music and literature and all the other arts, when artists and craftsmen see the real nature of beauty and allow their art to blow across our young men like breezes from a healthy land, then we'll have beauty and goodness in character.
..."Our young Guardians will have the self-control to do without law-courts, and if we succeed with their physical education, they'll have no need of doctors either.
...Ye who guard our city, think not that your youth was aught but mere appearance, for you were formed and fed in the womb of mother earth who sent you out to protect this land, your own mother, and all its citizens, your own brothers.Ye citizens are brothers all, but as God fashioned you he mingled gold to some, silver to others and iron and bronze to the rest.
...That thing is what we call 'reason'" "Just as our State had populace, auxiliaries and rulers working in harmony, doesn't it begin to look as if the mind has three similar elements; desire, reason, and some third one which rules them both?
..."Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those who pursue one to the exclusion of the other are made to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils, nor humanity itself I believe.
This was the summary provided by the Summarize feature of the already summarized version of Plato's Republic. While this summary may not be the best summary of such a work as Plato's Republic, it does capture the general essence, and more importantly, the last sentence which is a core doctrine of The Republic. What I think is neat about this application is the potential for integration with other daily activities such as reading email, skimming my Google Reader daily RSS feeds of articles, or just capturing high-level abstracts of various books when the text is available online. This could be done with the Automator if I took enough time to do it. (I'm really starting to love the Mac!)