You really don’t need your mouse when working with text. The trick is to just get a few, simple keyboard shortcuts under your fingers. Here’s how…This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) Members only. <a href=”https://www.macsparky.com/join/”>Care to join?</a> Or perhaps <a href=”https://www.macsparky.com/?memberful_endpoint=auth”>do you need to sign in?</a>
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The May Meetup (MacSparky Labs)
It’s time for another monthly meetup. This one’s set for May 11 at 10:00 AM Pacific. I’d love to see you there…
This is a post for MacSparky Labs Level 3 (Early Access) and Level 2 (Backstage) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
Capture Text Anywhere on Your Mac with TextSniper (Sponsor)
My thanks to TextSniper for sponsoring MacSparky.com this week. This is an app that I use … often. Just a few examples from the last week:
- I got the serial number from a picture of a tool
- I pulled text off of a donation receipt for my taxes.
- I pulled some text from an unfriendly website about my Japanese maple bonsai.
- I got nutrition data off a box of cereal.
TextSniper is a Mac OCR app that can extract text anywhere on your Mac’s screen and automatically save it to your clipboard so that you can paste it anywhere you need it. It can even read the text to you. The whole thing works a lot like the built-in screen capture on the Mac, just way more powerful.
Also, TextSniper doesn’t collect your data. The text recognition is processed on your Mac and does not require an internet connection.
With TextSniper, you can:
- Quickly get a text from PDFs, Zoom calls, Presentations, and Videos.
- Copy text from anywhere, even images and websites that don’t let you select text.
- Quickly grab data like email addresses, phone numbers, and links.
- Read QR codes and barcodes.
- Get text out of just about any image format, including JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP.
TextSniper works with macOS Catalina and later and also works with Parallels Desktop
Get TextSniper now and enjoy the fastest way to copy uncopyable text, wherever it may be. Use promo code TS2023 to get an additional 25% off.
Screencasting Deep Dive (MacSparky Labs)
The Opal C1 Webcam is meant to be the webcam everybody actually wants to use. It\’s got tons of software features and a better lens system than anything you\’d find in most (all?) other webcams. It\’s time for me to kick the tires…
This is a post for MacSparky Labs Tier 2 (Backstage) and Tier 3 (Early Access) Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
April 2023 Meetup (MacSparky Labs)
Here’s the video from the MacSparky Labs April Meetup. Topics include WWDC, new Apple hardware, and artificial intelligence…
This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?
Jazz Friday: Wayne Shorter’s Jazz Impressionism
I wrote about Wayne Shorter a few weeks ago after his passing. Since then I stumbled on to Adam Neely’s excellent video taking apart Wayne’s song, Infant Eyes. If you have any interest in music, this is worth your time.
The Looming Threat of AI-Generated Voice
I read this post by John Gruber, and I couldn’t agree more about the shenanigans that will come from AI-generated deepfakes. The computers are so good at duplicating your voice at this point that a determined jackass could “produce” a tape of you saying anything. Conversely, an insolent jackass will deny an actual recording of him and claim it is a deepfake. Down is up. Up is down.
I don’t know that we’ll ever have “smoking gun” audio again. It’s just a question of time before that is true for video, too. The bad guys are certainly going to use this to further polarize us. Be warned.
Using HazeOver (MacSparky Labs)
A lot of folks have been asking me about HazeOver since I recently talked about it on the Mac Power Users. Here’s a walkthrough on how the app works and how I use it…
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AI-Generated AppleScript
I enjoyed this article from Dr. Drang about the robot-created AppleScript. I think AppleScript will be one of the most difficult languages for AI models to write because it was created to make it more human-readable, and that makes it quirky.
The other thing about AppleScript that will likely trip up the AI models (it certainly trips me up) is the modular nature of the language. Every app that implements AppleScript uses its own dictionary calls. From one app to another, these dictionaries vary greatly, and every script involving a new app requires a bit of spelunking.
Good luck with AppleScript, Robots, you’ll need it.
Avoid Email Overwhelm with SaneBox (Sponsor)
Email can get overwhelming for all of us. It just keeps coming. And the more emails you reply to, the more people write you back, generating even more email. When you get down to it, however, for most of us the truly daunting thing about email is sorting the wheat from the chafe. Where are the five email messages that truly matter in that inbox of 267 items? That’s where SaneBox, this week’s MacSparky sponsor, will save you time.
Those newsletters and other unimportant emails you receive that you don’t need to read right away? You can stop them from interrupting your flow. With your training, SaneBox’s A.I. will analyze your email history. After learning what’s important to you, it ensures that only important email stays in your inbox. Those pesky emails that don’t require your immediate attention? You can get a daily digest from SaneBox at the time of your choosing and deal with them later.
Tidy up your inbox and let SaneBox deal with the clutter by sending them to your Sane folders. If you’re not quite sold, you can try it out for yourself. For MacSparky friends, SaneBox has a special offer. You can sign up for a free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription. Welcome to email sanity, it’s that simple.