When you think about it, it seems absurd that there’s no way to add the currently highlighted text on your Mac to your notes. The Notes app, which is the spiritual successor to Stickies, with the advantage of a) not clogging up your screen with yellow squares and b) syncing with your iPhone and iPad, is pretty great. But it lacks, inexplicably, a way to quickly clip the selected text.
This little System Service, which runs an Applescript, will fix that for you.
Brett Terpstra, the hardest working nerd on the internet, has come up with yet another super-useful single-serve utility. It’s called Clip Text File, and it grabs the contents of a plain text file and copies it to your clipboard, all without opening the file.
Instapaper queue getting on top of you? Why not Read It Now instead?
You all use and love Instapaper, right? Or perhaps Pocket, or Readability? These apps are the perfect way to put long articles aside for reading during downtime, or for browsing on a device better suited to the task than a desktop computer. But what about those times when you have a few moments and you just want to stop and read the website in front of your right now?
As a writer, I need to know the number of words in my textual musings on a fairly regular basis. I’m sure many of you might have the same need, if even to count the characters in those funny Tweets you’ve been thinking about for weeks. Today’s tip should help you out, in a super cool DIY style.
![Read It Now Lets You Read Articles In Your Browser. Right Now [Humor]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/read-it-now.jpeg "read it now")
![Count Words, Characters and Paragraphs With A Roll Your Own Automator Service [OS X Tips]](http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/WordCountService.jpg)
