A better – lovelier – Lorem Ipsum

Maybe you have a classical education and lorem ipsum brings back memories to you. Probably more likely, though, is that you’ve seen it in word processor and page design software where it’s used everywhere as sample text. The words fit designs better than “abcdefg” or certainly “xxxxxx” would.

It’s so common that if you have the right version of Microsoft Word, open a document now and type exactly this:

=lorem()

You’ll get a tonne of lorem ipsum filler text spewing out like a Latin-crazed TextExpander.

But.

If you do know Lorem ipsum, you also know how much it has been burnt into your head. You might not be able to quote any of it beyond those first two words, but you know it, you recognise it.

And now a company called Hyperakt has created what it calls Social Good Ipsum. Same idea, same easy-to-generate, just different text. You go to their website, say how much text you want, tap a button. It all flies out and then there’s a simple copy button to grab it all for you.

I just tried it and asked for 20 words. I got this:

Educate solve, sharing economy political connect our ambitions Global South. Dignity combat malaria; legal aid, integrity investment clean water; forward-thinking.

I like it. The process isn’t flawless: the Copy button didn’t work for me here on an iPad and the first time I asked for 20 words I actually got none at all.

But next time you need some Lorem ipsum, use this.

Via Swiss Miss

Grab this now – PopClip is on sale until Sunday

When you tap on a word or a line in iOS to select it, up pops a series of options right there. Copy, Paste, all that. PopClip gives you that on the Mac and I have regularly heard how great it is, I’ve just not got around to trying it. PopClip is on sale, I tried it, I can’t believe I haven’t become addicted to it before.

It is a very fast way to copy some text – it’s very much like the mini-toolbar in Word – but once you’re used to that, you can add more options. I’ve now had PopClip for around eighty seconds and I’ve already added options to send the selected text to Evernote or as a new task to OmniFocus.

So I can write ‘Add PopClip to your office iMac’, then select that text in quotes and send it to OmniFocus.

That looks like this:

Screen Shot 2014-06-06 at 20.46.14

Consider that a live example: I really wrote that, I really selected it, PopClip really gave me those options and I have really chosen that icon at the end. That text is now in OmniFocus waiting for the next time I’m back at my office Mac instead of here on my MacBook.

PopClip usually costs £2.99 UK or $4.99 US. I now know it is supremely worth it. But if you buy it on the Mac App Store between now and some time on this coming Sunday, you’ll get it for 69p UK or 99c US. It’s being done as part of a deal on the AppyFriday.com site but just go right to the App Store: go right now.