Miika Grady

Double-click any word in a newyorktimes.com article

I was reading Maureen Dowd’s article Two Against One, about the gang-up job the Clintons are doing on Obama leading up to the South Carolina primary, when I stumbled upon this note at the bottom of the page:

Tips: To find reference information about the words used in this article, double-click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry.

Skeptical that it would work (or return any useful information) I highlighted Barack Obama and clicked. A new window popped open with a full, detailed encyclopedic definition about everybody’s favorite candidate of “Change.” Sweet! That’s actually pretty useful, I thought, Let’s try again. I decided to find something I didn’t know too much about to test the feature’s usefulness. I opened the article Palestinians Topple Gaza Wall and Cross to Egypt, and highlighted Gaza Strip. And, there it was—an amazing, robust definition just a double-click away. Check it out. I don’t know how long this feature has been available on the site, (and I’m not sure how it works), but I love it. The web has been littered with all sorts of gimmicky web 2.0 features, but the usefulness of this tool, especially on a news site such as the Times, seems invaluable.