Nobody likes to be bombarded with information overload. Very often, people are forced to read through large bodies of text though the same information could be easily summarized in a few short sentences. In fact, social networks such as Twitter are immensely popular as they enforce users to convey meaningful information in 140 or less [...]
Nobody likes to be bombarded with information overload. Very often, people are forced to read through large bodies of text though the same information could be easily summarized in a few short sentences. In fact, social networks such as Twitter are immensely popular as they enforce users to convey meaningful information in 140 or less characters. Till date, I hadn’t seen a text summarizer app for the iPhone and then I stumbled upon Trimit.
The Trimit app uses an advanced algorithm to automatically summarize text to a specified length. The idea is simple yet unique – scan through the text at any URL and apply an algorithm that shortens bodies of text while keeping its meaning intact. Does it sound too good to be true? That’s the reason I installed the Trimit app on my iPhone and decided to explore how good a summarizer would be.
Once installed, Trimit provides instruction on how to use the app. You can swipe to the right to see instructions for editing and mode views. Once you enter the app, it shows the Mode View with various options to limit the text length based on number of characters – 140 (Twitter), 421 (Facebook), 300 (SMS), 550 (Reddit), 700 (Tumblr) and 1000.
Once you switch to the Editing View, you can directly paste the text to be summarized or specify a URL.
The app shows a Trimming progress indicator and once it’s done, the summarized text appears in the editing window and you can shorten it for Facebook, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, email, or SMS by simply shaking your phone.
I tried Trimit with a couple of websites as well as few paragraphs from a randomly picked user manual. I have to admit that in most cases, Trimit did a good job of shedding the extra baggage and summarizing the important text. Trimit finds the sentences in the passage of text that are most integral to the passage’s meanings. The only downside – the app crashed once as I was trying to trim down a message to post it on Twitter.
The app originally launched for 99 cents but it’s available as free (for now). Here’s a video of Trimit in action.
This article, Trimit for iPhone: Let’s Keep It Short And Simple!, was originally published at simonblog.com.
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