I love playing with systems that are supposed to “give you the answer.” Some examples to explain my fascination:

1. The old Ask.com
2. Financial portfolio balancing services
3. Babelfish

My favorite example is Microsoft Word’s AutoSummarize feature. When I put my resume in AutoSummarize and ask for a 2% summary I get:

9/01 – 6/05:Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
3/02 – 3/03: Stanford Tree, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Not bad; most people that know me really well would say this summarizes most of my conversations ;)

Here’s some fun with AutoSummarize and monumental documents from our past.

Now lets apply AutoSummarize to Hamlet.

Hor. 16 Mar. Mar. Hor. Hor. 36 Hor. Hor. 52 Hor. Hor. Hor. Hor. Hor. Hor. Hor. 124 Hor. 16 Hor. 156 Hor. Hor. 180 Hor. Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham.
Hor. Ham. 164 Hor. Ham. 168 Ham. Hor. Ham. Hor. Ham. 180 Hor. Ham. Hor. Ham. Ham. Hor. Hor. Ham. Hor. Ham. 200 Hor. Ham. Ham. 220 Hor. Ham. 228 Hor. Ham. Ham. 236 Ham. Ham. Hor. 240 Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham. 256 Ham. Ham. Ham.
Ham. Ham. 8 Ham. Ham. Ham. Lord Hamlet!

Looks like AutoSummarize choked on my formatting, but the “Lord Hamlet” at the end is a nice touch… Very entertaining.

Credit to Paul Kedrosky for reminding me what fun AutoSummarize can be with his more recent posts.