Ever since the advent of the Internet, we have been subjected to huge information overload. This is particularly true in case you are a working professional. Multiple text documents have to be read, understood and summarized for team mates or to research more on the topic. At times, a brief summary of what the document is about could be a huge time saver.
Topicmarks is a web app that creates smart, interactive synopses from text documents in minutes. If you are someone who handles a lot documents over the course of a normal day, come find out how this web app could help boost your productivity.
Overview
Topicmarks enables you to quickly extract the contents and facts of uploaded text documents, eliminating the need to read them extensively. With the help of advanced natural language processing technology, the app tries to understand the true meaning of your text and will summarize it for you while retaining all its facts.
Overview
The web app is free to use and makes it extremely easy signing up for the service – just use your existing Google or Yahoo accounts. While on the sign in page, you have the option to enroll for testing their Evernote app too!
User Interface
Dashboard
After a hassle free one click sign in process, you will be redirected to the dashboard. Calling the design of the dashboard minimal would be an understatement. I have come across a lot of apps with minimal user interface, but the Topicmarks user interface means business and nothing else. From the clearly demarcated zones you can view the files you have previously uploaded, explore summarized files and upload documents for analysis.
Ease of Use
Documents can be uploaded in three different ways – first by uploading from the computer, pasting the text into the app or by submitting the URL where the document exists. I tried to submit the link of a Google Docs text file and got an error. Apparently, the app only accepts URLS that end with a standard document extension like txt, pdf, html or doc. When I submitted a link to a PDF file, the service worked like a charm. So, if you do need to use a Google Docs document, you can download it to your computer and upload it, or just copy/paste the text.
Here’s What it Does
Topicmarks is designed to condense long texts into short summaries of 3-50 sentences. If your text is 10 sentences or less, there isn’t much the app can do. I pasted a 900 word article into the app and hit upload.
Statistics and Estimation
Since the text contained a few HTML tags, the app didn’t process the text the first time. I tried again after removing the tags and this time it worked. Topicmarks displays a cool status page that brilliantly showcases the stats about the document. The graphic indicating how much amount has been saved by the app in comparison to human reading is a very nice touch.
Progess Bar
There is a progress bar indicating the status the of the analysis and the app also displays the various actions the algorithm employs on the text to extract a summary. Depending on the length of the text, the time for analysis to complete varies, but is usually complete within a few seconds.
The Results
Results
As soon as the analysis is complete, Topicmarks emails the results and if you want comprehensive analysis, head over to the text knodes section. To their credit, the web app does a stunning job analyzing the text. Not only is the text is summarized, the app fleshes out the facts, keywords and also builds an index.
Facts and Weightage
The list of facts are given a score between 1 and 10 based on their significance and I found them to be largely accurate. Though all the facts are listed, if you focus on the top few results by weightage, you will understand the crux of the document.
Then there is the summary. The app summarized the entire article to my satisfaction and if you find it to be too short, use the slider on top to increase the number of sentences of the summary. More facts come into light by moving the slider and the summary can have a maximum of 50 sentences.
Privacy
By default, all the documents you summarize are visible to your friends and search engines. So if you are handling a confidential document, go to the Properties tab to mark it private. From this section, you can share the results with your friends too.
Privacy and Sharing
It goes without saying that the app currently processes only English language text. The developers suggest using Google Translate as a possible work around. But given the fact that Google Translate doesn’t always offer a perfect translation, this might not be the best solution.
All text knodes are stored for free. But the developers does not rule out charging a nominal fee for power users in the future. Fair enough!
Final Thoughts
Topicmarks is a very dependable service despite the fact it’s still in beta. Thanks to this little algorithmic buddy, you can retain every single fact without reading anything yourself! By uploading all your text documents, you can turn the web app into your personal knowledge base.
With features like finding links between texts and grouping texts around topics, the app can help with advanced research on various topics. I strongly recommend Topicmarks for those who are tired of reading pages after pages to just understand the essence of it.
Share Your Thoughts!
Do you go through a bunch of text documents daily? Will you be trusting an algorithm when it comes to summarizing an official document?