Save research time - Gistweb it

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I found the most amazing tool on the Internet. (I actually received it in an email from Jonathan Leger.)

Gistweb

It installs on your browser. Then when you come to a wordy web page, it cuts out all the fluff and leaves the facts. What a wonderful idea for writers!

I am fiddling with it now. It isn't perfect, but it is looking awfully good.

Michael

[Greybird]

It's hardly "amazing." Its* algorithms clearly do three tasks:

~ Remove text or directions that involve page-format mechanics.

~ Remove text that continues for a specified length which doesn't include what the program discerns to be the direct topic (proper noun) of the page.

~ Remove, if the tasks above don't sufficiently boost the "editing" stats, the last half (approximately) of most paragraphs.

Every page I tried it on lost too much of the flavor and texture, and subtle distinctions, of the original to make this worthwhile.

If you want useful condensations, going to the hugely-hyper-linked Wikipedia in the first place — which site's only marginal utility is in providing, well, the gist of a subject — would actually save time.

___

* Any Website that hopelessly confuses "it's" and "its" in the first sentence on display does not inspire my confidence as to its "editing" abilities.

Edited April 17, 2008 by Greybird

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just did it on this page:

GistWeb

Save research time - Gistweb it - Objectivist Living

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9% Reduction Achieved (74 words)

Search this forum only?

I found the most amazing tool on the Internet.

It installs on your browser. Then when you come to a wordy web page, it cuts out all the fluff and leaves the facts.

I am fiddling with it now.

Every page I tried it on lost too much of the flavor and texture, and subtle distinctions, of the original to make this worthwhile.

Hmmmmm...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Steve,

To be fair, I should give some context. There is a category and use of articles that is completely foreign to people outside the Internet marketing world. If you are interested in looking at this, go to Ezine Articles to take a peek.

The purpose is basically the following. People make a web site to sell something. Nobody knows it is there so they have to drive traffic to it, otherwise they don't sell anything. The best way is by being on the front page of search engine pages when a potential customer looks up a word related to what they are selling. Another way is to have a link to their site along with some related information formatted to induce the potential customer to seek more information (and ultimately buy the product).

Added to this, there are many owners of ezines, newsletters, sites, blogs, etc., who don't have time or talent to write their own content. So a practice developed of people writing articles and putting them in article banks like Ezine Articles. Anyone who wants to use them may do so for free provided he does not change them and keeps the author's bio at the end, which has the all-important link to the author's money site.

There are two advantages an author derives from this. The first is obviously the reader possibly going to his site through the link at the bottom. This is called targeted public since the reader is already interested in the niche. But the link being posted on many different places through the article being spread around makes the person's site more important in the eyes of the search engines and moves it up the page when people search for related terms. (In the jargon, related terms are called keywords and links to the person's site are called backlinks.)

An entire marketing strategy for selling affiliate products has risen around article promotion called Bum Marketing. According to the guy who devised this, there is no investment other than time, so even a bum can make money doing it. It is enormously popular in the Internet marketing field.

People who do this kind of marketing need to write articles quickly with just enough information in them to whet a person's appetite, no more no less. And they usually need to write on a whole slew of different topics as they are usually selling a wide variety of products.

Leger is a master of Internet marketing, especially traffic manipulation. His tool was designed to serve this end, not traditional academics or scholars. That's why it is a bit, er... brutal... in what it chops out. The person using it does not need all the facts, but needs commands, advertisements, fluff, etc., even less. He is usually under the gun time-wise. So I think this little tool does well what it was intended to do.

Later I might provide an overview of a very interesting formula for article writing I came across by a guy named Andrew Hansen. He does an article from scratch in about half an hour, even if he knows nothing about the topic. He once wrote 40 articles in 2 days on a dare for a place called Warrior Forum. The result was rated medium to very good with nothing poor.

I have looked over his method and I like it (a lot) for the times you need to write quick original news-like content on a topic you are not too familiar with (or even one you are).

Michael