Save Time, Read Less: See Automatic Summaries of Web Pages and Links
Long ago, I used to think that writing executive summaries were a waste of time for the author and a way to dumb down the document for the executive. Then I saw the sheer volume of stuff that executives need to digest every day, and changed my tune. Now I find myself overwhelmed with stuff to read myself, so I have started to rely on a tool that generates automatic executive summaries of Web pages for me, letting me decide quickly if I need to spend more time there or move on.
WikiSeer is a Firefox add-on that generates a summary of the current Web page in a pop-up window. The site claims to reduce the text by up to 99%, showing just the most significant content. Sometimes the reduction results in something about a stone's throw away from gibberish, but frequently it reduces the text into bite sized, helpful chunks.
My favorite way to use WikiSeer is not for the summaries of the currently open Web page, but rather for insight into what's hiding behind links on the page. Just click the WikiSeer icon in FireFox's status bar and then hover over a link; it'll pop up a summary of the text on the destination page. That's genuinely useful -- you can see if there's anything on the link without clicking over to it. [via gHacks]