Happy Thanksgiving 🦃 You’re reading the Wonder Tools newsletter. I’m Jeremy Caplan, director of teaching & learning at the Newmark J-School. Here are some things I’ve found useful lately.
Text sniping
I’m a big fan of a new app called Text Sniper. It grabs text from anything I screenshot on my Mac. I’ve been using it recently to grab text from slides presented online. I was able to easily copy text from images to include in my notes. I also like being able to grab text from locked PDFs, YouTube videos, or other sites that prevent copying and pasting.
Download art
Artvee is a terrific resource for free, public-domain art that you can download. It sources from museums around the world including the Met, the Dutch Rijksmuseum, and the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland.
Zoom cards
REMOTELY is a fun Kickstarter project I backed this week after reading about it on Fred Wilson’s AVC blog. The creator made some neat cards you hold up in remote meetings. Use them to silently people know they're muted, you’ve got a question, need a break. Or whatever else you need to communicate visually during an online meeting. For a free alternative, you can download and print out a free PDF set of these Supercards. (Print 4 per sheet for card size).
Efficient printouts and handouts
Here's a simple, quick trick I rely on to shorten printouts and handouts, using the Apple Print Menu's layout option. It's accessible from any Mac program and lets you combine 2, 4, 6, 9 or 16 pages onto each page of a PDF — or for printing. It works similarly on Chromebooks. This is great for sharing or printing slides, especially if you use big text and images on each slide. My long slide decks transform into simple four or eight-page handouts.
Wander the world
Given current limits on travel, it's nice to wander internationally on virtual City Walks.
Swap windows
Get a fresh perspective by taking a look through random windows on WindowSwap. Don't worry, you'll be looking outward on the world, not inward on people's homes.
Listen to nature
Listen to sounds of nature recorded in the great national parks maintained by the U.S. National Parks service.
YouTube classics
This list of 50 classic viral YouTube videos, curated by Time editors in 2010, brings back memories of the pre-Trump Internet.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy the holiday. - Jeremy
Thanks, Jeremy for describing this app. I think you are satisfied with this app. Can you please elaborate?
Thank you so much, as ever. One request: when you link to an Apple-only or Windows-only tool, if you knew of a similar one on the other platform, that would be wonderful!