N.Y. Times Double-Click

Noticed for the first time… only six months or so late:

The New York Times introduced an online feature some six months or more ago whereby if you double-click on any word a window pops up to offer you various reference works’ take on the word. Thus, from an article in today’s Times, a double-click on “nursing” (you must be in the article and not just on the front page of the site) gives a dictionary definition and one from a medical dictionary as well. “Florida” gives a dictionary entry, and entries from the NYT Guide to Essential Knowledge, the Columbia Encyclopedia and a Houghton Mifflin product called Geography.

The double-click seems simply to run a search on Answers.com, providing that tool’s results, but in a somewhat truncated version.

My favourite results, though, are from a tool that is not included in an Answers.com search: the fascinating WordNet at the Princeton Cognitive Science Laboratory, which provides you with a “network of meaningfully related words and concepts.”

Lots of folks found this innovation really irritating, because they are in the habit of selecting words, sentences or paragraphs with a double- or triple-click and are frustrated on the Times site. If you happen to be one of those — and if you happen to use Firefox with Greasemonkey enabled, there’s a script you can install that will frustrate the Times instead of you.