Wordnik, The New Wikipedia?
How ironic that one of the first truly innovative search engines to come a long in the past 5 years started out as little more than the new millennium’s contemporary version of a dictionary. Wordnik, which launched as the brainchild of Erin McKean, provides contextual information about words and their definitions. The project states its mission as “discovering all the words and everything about them,” which it does by providing real-time search results from Twitter, the web, Flickr and it’s own database off definitions. Here’s what a typical word search on Wordnik looks like:
There’s been enough press coverage about the general concept but what I found most fascinating was what Wordnik does for things like phrases, dates and normal search queries. Here’s what a search for “Bill Gates” returned:
In the image above you’ll see real-time search results about Bill Gates from Twitter.
And images from Flickr.
The most unique feature, however, is a small chart in the lower left corner that visualizes how many times a word has been in a particular year (shown above). Apparently in the 50’s people really liked to use the word “omnipotent“! But imagine a heat map like this, using to show the frequency of search terms or word uses in real time? Here’s the results for searching the word “twitter” which is both a brand and an actual part of the english lexicon.
This is across the span of two hundred years, what if it let us look at how many times a brand’s name was used in a day? or an hour? Wordnik crowdsources a lot of it’s information. Users add new definitions and uses, they can record their own aural pronunciations of words and they can suggest synonyms and alternative spellings in wiki-like fashion.
In the beginning of this piece I showed you the search results for searching for a non-word, a phrase or a foreign term would display similar results. It’s fascinating to think of some of these features being available to a database like Wikipedia’s. Imagine looking up words, terms, dates, phrases and getting more than just a description…actual conversations that had occurred, recordings of how to properly pronounce the persons name, frequency of the terms use in articles over the years, etc. Even without emphasis on any of those things, Wordnik still offers a great deal of utility, whether you’re looking up words or not. Essentialy Wordnik is Mahalo (the old contender for Wikipedia’s throne) for words, but I find it more fun and far more useful than I ever found Mahalo.
This is article is syndicated from Appfrica.org. Appfrica.org facilitates, mentors and incubates entrepreneurs in software in East Africa and Uganda. Their goal is to offer a physical space with a solid internet connection, servers, software and computers that will allow students and recent graduates a place to develop their ideas in a constructive environment with industry professionals outside of school. For more great articles from Appfrica please visit Appfrica.net.
About the Author Jon Gosier is an American social entrepreneur and software developer living in East Africa where he's the founder of Appfrica.net a blog that covers African the technology scene. Follow him at http://twitter.com/appfrica
See all posts by Jon Gos.
That was her outlet when she was stressed about a test or needed to replica watches just clear replica watches her head, Kelly King said. Chelsea was born in Poway, a well-to-do suburb of homes and office parks northeast of San Diego. Her family, including her 13-year-old rolex Watches brother, followed rolex Watches Brent King to various mortgage banking jobs in the San Francisco Bay area and suburban Chicago before returning to the San Diego area. Their home was badly damaged in breitling Watches 2007 wildfires breitling Watches that ravaged Southern California. Brent, 47, is now between jobs. Kelly, 48, works as a medical assistant in a dermatologist's office. Chelsea researched 90 cartier Watches colleges, with cartier Watches an eye toward a career that would combine her interests in writing and environmental protection. She has been accepted by the University of Washington and the University of British omega Watches Columbia. She is omega Watches one of the most driven, personable, caring people that you could ever meet, Brent King said. Her goal in life is to brighten everyone's day. That's what she does, Panerai Watches and when she Panerai Watches walks into the room, you know she's there. She often stays up studying past midnight, working so hard that her parents urge her to ease off and spend more time with friends.
I love playing Scrabble so this site will be great! Thanks!
I love playing Scrabble so this site will be great! Thanks!