Here’s a cool step-saver, something no other operating system offers—a little something Apple likes to call data detectors.
In short, Mac OS X programs like Mail and TextEdit can recognize commonly used bits of information that may appear in your text: a physical address, a phone number, a date and time, and so on. With one quick click, you can send that information into the appropriate Mac OS X program, like iCal, Address Book, or your Web browser (for looking up an address on a map).
Here’s how it works: When you spot a name, address, date, or time, point to it without clicking. A dotted rectangle appears around it. Control-click inside the rectangle, or right-click, or click the ▾ at the right side. As shown in Figure 5-5, a shortcut menu appears. Its contents vary depending on what you’re pointing to:
A mailing address. You can choose Show Address in Google Maps from the shortcut menu; your Web browser opens and shows you that address on a Google map.
Figure 5-5. Mail can detect street addresses, phone numbers, dates, Web addresses, and times. When it spots something you may want to add to another program like Address Book or iCal, it draws a dotted line around the info when you point to it without clicking. Click the little ▾ to get a shortcut menu for further options—like automatically adding the address to your Address Book program or seeing the address pinpointed on a Google map.
Alternatively, you can choose Create New Contact (to add an Address Book entry for this address) or Add to Existing Contact (if the person is in your Address Book—just not the address). Like magic, a little box sprouts out of the data-detected rectangle, prefilled with the information from the message, so that you can approve it.
A date and time. When you click the ▾, you get the pop-up shown in Figure 5-6. It shows you the actual iCal day view where Lion wants to add the appointment.
Figure 5-6. When a data detector detects a date and time, it can suggest an appointment on your calendar automatically. It even shows you the proposed new iCal entry (in dotted lines), in context with all your existing appointments, so you’ll know whether to accept or decline the new appointment! If everything looks good, click Add to iCal. Or, if Mail’s parsing of the appointment needs a little tweaking, click Edit; the box expands so that you can edit the details.
The logic of this feature is overwhelming; after all, when someone emails you to ask if you’re free for drinks next Thursday at 10, what’s the first thing you usually want to do? Check your calendar, of course.
A phone number. As with mailing addresses, the shortcut menu here offers you things like Create New Contact and Add to Existing Contact. The third one, Large Type, is great when you want to call this person right now—it displays the phone number in huge type, filling your screen, so you can see it from across your mansion.
A flight number. When you highlight flight information (for example, “AA 152”), the data detector offers a Show Flight Information command. It opens the Flights widget of Dashboard (Deleting a Desktop), so you can see the flight’s departure time, arrival time, and other details. It works only if the airline is represented as a two-letter code.
A Web address. When you click the ▾ next to a URL (like www.nytimes.com), you get a pop-up balloon that contains the actual Web page! You get a quick look, without even having to leave your email message.
A package tracking number. When you send a package using a service like FedEx, UPS, or the U.S. Postal Service, you usually get a confirmation email. A new Lion data detector can recognize such numbers and, when you click the ▾, offer you a Track Shipment command. Choosing it displays a pop-up window right there at your cursor, showing the courier company’s tracking page for that package, and thereby letting you know exactly where your package is right now.
