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Copernic Summarizer

Today's Net is awash in cool tools; some free, others try 'n buy. However, the most important are those that help manage knowledge. And assist you in avoiding being swamped by information overload. So what better utility to begin with than Copernic's Summarizer ($80). This excellent utility from Canada-based Agents Technologies and developers of Copernic, the best search tool I have ever used.

Summarizer first came to my attention a few months ago. However, my impressions were based on press reports. Luckily, Copernic's Product Manager heard my plea. And after a bit of back 'n forth sent a free copy to me! The only downside of this review is you will have to wait for a while to "test drive" the utility. But I recommend that you don't waste the time. And on my recommendation buy a copy ($79.95) from www.copernic.com as soon as possible.

As an IT professional, I find Copernic Summarizer a godsend. Especially as the sheer volume of information available is increasing. And the quantum of reports, white papers, and other required-reading documents flowing across my desktop is near mind-boggling. I usually have just enough time to read the first few lines before trashing the document or ignoring it. And when I put on my Web developer hat, tasks like listing page keywords can be absolutely mind-numbing.

However, Summarizer makes my daily routines so much easier. I can now parse all those documents for a quick read. And do a similar job on Web pages for easy keyword abstraction. Summarizer terms keywords as concepts. Essentially, it allows for abstraction without being driven to distraction!

In the brief period I've used it, Summarizer has been a life saver, nay, sanity saver. It lets me read more (words) in less (time). Purists argue that word processors like Word2000 include an auto-summary feature. However, this doesn't generate keywords. And its approach is based on a fixed baseline which so far I find seems to be a hit-n-miss affair.

Not that Summarizer is perfect. It's summaries can vary between the concise to wildly incomplete. However, like querying an Internet search engine, with time your skill with settings, amount of data marked for processing and interpretation of results improves. And I can state with certainty that my summarizations are better than when I first began a week ago.

But comparing Summarizer head-on with Word is unfair. Word's feature is restricted to that one application. In comparison, Summarizer parses Word 97/2000 .DOC files, Outlook 97/2000 email, Web pages (HTML) plus plain text (.TXT) files. The product can also open URLs for directly parsing contents of a Web address. And if that wasn't enough it also does 3 other languages besides English: French, Spanish and German. You can also select a portion of text, copy it to the clipboard, and then hit the Summarize button to parse the clipboard contents. However this feature is currently restricted to document files because I was unable to summarize parts of an Excel file in the Clipboard.

Summarizer also integrates with Internet Explorer. And adds an icon to the toolbar plus a Summarize command in the Tools and Context menus. In Word, you get an icon and a Summarize command in the Tools menu. Outlook has a Summarize icon on the main toolbar.

If you happen to have a copy of Copernic2000 (the Web search utility) installed, Summarizer will include a link to this utility in its own menu. It didn't work with my version, but I attribute that to a recurrent association glitch I'm suffering with Windows.

Summarizer allows you to set the number of concepts within a document. While the default is 10, the other two ends of the spectrum are 5 and 30. Adjustment is done by a slider control. The utility also re-summarizes on-the-fly immediately after you adjust the slider. The accompanying documentation advises against summarizing documents with multiple subjects. Instead, it recommends selecting a portion to be summarized.

The proprietary "Web Essence' technology better parses Web pages and site to only summarize the essentials. The utility prepares a document summary containing the concepts (keywords) and the sentences in which they occur. And if you look closely on the status bar, the word count as well. You can export a summary to .HTML, .RTF and .TXT formats. Or email it as inline text using Outlook 97/2000. The product also has pretty good security. I installed it at home without a modem, and every time I ran the utility it prompted me to register. At work, I followed directions to electronically register my copy.

G Menon
[email protected]

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