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No Need to Leave the Page As GuruNet Fetches Answers
SUPPOSE YOU WERE reading an article on the Web, or an e-mail, or
even a Word document from your office or school, and you came across
this sentence: "The abstemious people from Woonsocket invested aggressively
in companies like Tecumseh Products, hoping to become as rich as
their idol, John Kluge." And suppose you have no idea what "abstemious"
means, where Woonsocket is, what Tecumseh Products does, or who
Mr. Kluge is. How can you find out quickly using the Internet?
Well, you could go to a search engine, or a Web-based reference
source, and look up each term individually. But that would require
you to leave the document you were reading and laboriously type
in each term for multiple searches, probably at multiple sites.
Instead, you could use a very cool, but little-known, free program
called GuruNet that fetches such answers from the Internet, almost
instantly, without leaving the text you're reading.
With GuruNet, you just click on the word you want defined or explained
while holding down the ALT key on your keyboard. A definition or
explanation pops up rapidly, assuming you're connected to the Internet.
You not only don't have to leave the page you were reading, you
don't even have to open your Web browser. GuruNet's software, for
Windows only, is separate from your browser, and it works on words
in any document on your screen, not just on Web pages. And GuruNet
doesn't merely present you with Web links on the topic; it actually
provides answers about people and places, companies and things.
FOR INSTANCE, GURUNET will quickly define abstemious as "eating
and drinking in moderation." It will also give you some synonyms
and a translation of the word into foreign languages. GuruNet will
tell you that Woonsocket is a city in northern Rhode Island, and
will even supply a map and the current weather there.
With an ALT-click on Tecumseh Products, you can learn it's a Michigan
firm that makes pumps and the like and that its stock has been trading
well below its highs. And, as for John Kluge, GuruNet will inform
you he's a billionaire philanthropist who made his fortune in broadcasting.
All of this information appears in a small window that pops up
on top of the document or e-mail or Web page you're reading. The
window alslo typically includes some related Web links, in case
you'd like to probe further, and even a form that lets you rapidly
search several online stores for books on the topic at hand. You
can copy information from the window, or even e-mail a link to its
contents to a friend, all with minimal effort.
GuruNet isn't just handy; it's smart. It'll try and guess the
entire phrase or context of a word you click on. If, for example,
you click on either word in the phrase "Supreme Court," the program
will pop up with an answer about the highest court in the U.S.,
not a definition of either word on its own. And it pays attention
to capitalization. It knows that the word "polish" is something
you do to furniture, but Polish is a language and culture.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD GuruNet free of charge at www.gurunet.com. The
download is fairly small at about 900 kilobytes. It has been around
for awhile, but now there are a couple of added features and the
content is much richer. Also, there's a new, optional GuruNet "answer
bar," that remains visible all the time, so you can manually type
in terms that you want to define but that aren't on the screen.
For those who don't want to download the software, or who don't
use Windows, GuruNet can also now be used from the Web page. This
approach doesn't allow you to click on words for answers, but if
you type them in, you'll get results.
The service is a work in progress, and it's far from perfect. While
it draws on a host of reference works and Web databases, it doesn't
use premiere sources, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica and major
newspapers. It tends to rely on almanacs, single-volume encyclopedias
and little-known reference sites, though it does use major dictionaries.
Instead of using Yahoo or Google as its search engine, it uses an
obscure search site called Oingo. The information I saw, however,
is pretty accurate, if not extensive. The service expects to add
famous quotations and sports statistics this week.
It's not that hard to stump GuruNet. For instance, if you click
on "DVD," the acronym for the popular new video-disk format, it
thinks you must mean Dover Downs Entertainment, a racetrack company
in Delaware whose stock symbol is DVD. A click on the word "Cisco"
yields information on Cisco, Ga., not the technology firm.
In my tests, GuruNet didn't know Oprah, and its first choice for
the name "Lieberman" was Nancy, the basketball player, rather than
Joe, the senator and vice-presidential candidate. In most cases,
however, you can find the correct reference by clicking on a feature
called "Did you mean?" that offers a list of alternative topics
in case GuruNet guessed wrong.
Finally, while GuruNet performs pretty quickly, even on a dial-up
connection, it can be slow at times if the network is busy or congested.
It doesn't work with text inside an image. And occasionally it can
go haywire, guessing wildly wrong.
But GuruNet is a very well done, very useful program -- one of
the most ingenious ways to use the Internet I've ever seen.
For a look at system resources, buying a Mac, and sharing a DSL
line, check out my Mossberg's Mailbox column in Tech Center.
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