If you've ever mocked up a web page, print publication or set of presentation slides for a project but didn't have any copy text yet, visit Lorem 2. Graphic designers and typographers have long used a stock set of Latin gibberish commonly referred to as "Lorem ipsum" to mock up projects, evaluate layouts and preview typefaces before any text had been provided by a copywriter or client. What sets Lorem 2 apart is that it provides samples of text for short paragraphs, long paragraphs, short list items and long list items so that you get a better sense of where text will break in your layout and change the size of columns or fonts accordingly—and it's just one click away once bookmarked in a browser. Microsoft Word will also generate sample text for you. For you pixel-pushers out there, what's your favourite way to generate placeholder text?

Windows only: Multiple Find and Replace does pretty much what it says — find and replace text strings across multiple documents. It doesn't have the binary- and archive-searching power of Windows Grep or the command line elegance of Find and Replace Text for accomplishing tasks, but it is tiny and dead simple. I experience some problems selecting a large range of files, and you'll probably want to click Show Advanced Options button and select Back up changed files for your first few forays. Multiple Find and Replace is a free download for Windows only.

Got a bunch of scanned documents in PDF format but lack for good text-converting OCR software? Google is now indexing their text conversions of PDFs, which means anyone with access to open web space can let their monstrous servers do all the heavy lifting. The Digital Inspiration blog recommends putting your PDF files in a folder and creating a page that links to all of them. If you're a bit concerned about dropping all that text into the public's search results and you own your space, you can use Google's Webmaster Tools to reign in what gets scanned and indexed on your site, although you should assume anything you put online can be found by those looking for it.

Gmail's latest Labs experiment adds an option to send SMS text messages to contacts from the Google Chat sidebar, at no cost and with replies arriving as new chat lines. Like other Labs, you'll have to enable it by heading to the Labs icon in your Gmail settings and enabling "Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat," although the feature is apparently being rolled out gradually to users. Once enabled, you can type and choose a contact from the Chat sidebar and select "Send SMS" from the options that pop up to the right of their name, or select "Video & more" from the options dialog on a chat window. Enter a phone number, type your chat, and Google tells the recipient that they can reply like any other text. Gmail's definitely making a play to become your all-in-one contact and messaging centre, and free text messaging is a powerful tool to getting there. If you've tried out Gchat-powered texting, tell us your experiences in the comments. Screen via Gizmodo.

Windows only: Free, lightweight Notepad alternative AkelPad offers a roster of handy text editing features out of the box, such as tabs for working on multiple files, fast search and replace, file preview, and a multi-level undo. There are also dozens of plug-ins that can enhance AkelPad further, like a fullscreen mode similar to DarkRoom, LineBoard to apply line numbers and line bookmarking, auto bracketing, and enhancements to cut and paste. If you're in the market for a notepad replacement and AkelPad doesn't fit the bill, make sure to check out our battle of the notepad replacements to see if you can find a better fit. AkelPad is a free download for Windows only.

Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Editra, a free, cross-platform text editor, is a great lightweight solution for anyone who does coding, HTML work, or just a good amount of plain text editing. Similar to Notepad++, but with a whole lot of extras, the editor features tabbed files, context and code highlighting, theme-able icons and look, session saving, transparency support, auto-completion, and lots of indent and context tools that will make coders feel right at home. Even if you're not code-savvy, the editor packs a lot of features in without feeling overly crowded. Editra is a free download for Windows, Mac, or Linux systems.
Editra [via PhoroLinux]

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If you've got a big heap o' text to drop on your blog, in Twitter, or any chat program that doesn't really love paragraph pasting, TinyPaste is a reasonable solution. Like TinyURL, the one-click tool simply takes in long strings of text and converts them to short URLs, which, when clicked, bring up the text inside a mostly clean screen. There's also a Firefox extension for right-click transformation of text into TinyPaste links. The service is free to use, doesn't require a sign-up.

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Stylish Java applet Wordle creates custom word clouds out of any text you throw at it. You can also have it parse your Del.icio.us tags for a cloud, but either way, the real fun is in customising the layout, tag colours, fonts, and much more. Once you're done, you can share your clip in the site's gallery, print it out, or save it using your own screen-capture tool. It makes for nice backgrounds and icons, but it can also be helpful for students and anyone trying to parse a text for emphasis—the clip above is from the mammoth last paragraph of James Joyce's Ulysses, which can certainly hide its meanings pretty well.

If you saw Adam's recent Hive Five roundup of text editors, you might have noticed that Vim, a child of Unix/Linux favourite Vi, still carries a lot of favour among coders and back-to-basics text workers. Now you can try out Vi and all its shortcut/macro goodness online with jsvi, a JavaScript-written clone of the basic Vi interface. It's obviously focused on code, carrying substitutions and spell checking for the most common languages, but it's a fun place to try out coding for newcomers, or for programmers to do a little quick hacking when they're away from their systems.

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Need to make all-caps text a little less shout-y? Don't feel like going through a ream of lines and fixing all the capitalisation? TextOpus, a free text-filtering web app, is a great place to start. Paste in problematic text and choose from a wealth of options, from line adders to a decent, simple "Clean Text" option to a very handy "Strip tags" that takes the HTML and forum code out of a blurb. For those who know what to do with them, there's also options to hash, hexadecimal, and encrypt text. Next time you're staring at a wealth of un-printable babble, try TextOpus before diving in with your mouse and backspace key.

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