New Browser Tool Lets You Copy Text from Images

Project Naptha is a new plug-in for the Chrome browser that lets you do text recognition (OCR) of online images (e.g., photos of documents) and then cut and paste directly from the image in the webpage.  That means no more save-image-as + import-photo-into-Word + save-as-PDF + OCR + copy-paste-into-your-document OR the old standby: transcribe.

That means you can copy the title or legend from a chart and diagrams or a quote on an inspirational Upworthy poster! Life is good. Should even work on old books in the Google books archive.

Anastasia Salter writes about it in the ProfHacker column (28 April) at Chronicle.com.

Cool Looking Tool for "Grading" with MS Word

As usual, just when you think of something, it turns out someone’s already developed it a few years before.  I haven’t tried this product, but some friends have suggested it (over Facebook, if you are wondering). It’s from “11 Trees,” a company whose tagline is “Solutions for Writers, Teachers, and Editors”