I stumbled across a site that describes itself as an “incredibly fast dictionary”. It’s known as definr (http://definr.com/).
The first question I asked myself is whether we need yet another online dictionary. Some folks use Wiktionary, much like Wikipedia it’s only as accurate as the folks making the entries want it to be, so most folks probably leverage something they trust: Compact Oxford, American Heritage, Merriam-Webster’s to name a few.
Yes definr is fast, blazingly so partly because it caches the top 10,000 definitions in memory. It also tries to guess what you’re typing as you’re typing a word to search, by the time you click Enter it’s got a definition at the ready.
The quality of the answers is ok, nothing to write home about when I compared some sample words to three dictionaries I trust listed above, but it’s better than some. While it’s not the best, it is worth taking a look at in my opinion. The value of seeing it propose possible words as you’re typing is interesting because it offers me an opportunity to discover new words previously unknown to me and that gets me excited because I’m a word geek. For instance, when I tried testing it’s ability to handle Gen Y lexicon such as “Fark”, by the time I got to the ‘k’ it offered the word farkleberry. Where the heck else would I have been offered an opportunity to learn about the farkleberry and sparkleberry bushes from eastern United States?
BTW, ‘Fark’ was not in the definr dictionary, this is a good thing. The database is based on Princeton’s open WordNet 2.0, believe it or not you can download this lexical database yourself.
The verdict? I’m going to stick with OneLook as my first stop for dictionary searches, but I’m adding definr to my browser’s search plugins as a quick/available alternative because I think it has promise and it offers me a learning opportunity.
James Spencer from pixel eyes productions alerted me to a new machinima series they’ve posted called Shelf Life, it uses the models from Half Life 2. I honestly think this stuff is a masterpiece! The quality if this video blows me away.
The audio is spot on and the music adds to the creepiness factor of this mind-bending thriller. The cinematic aspects are something you’d expect right out of Hollywood movie, not a machinima. For instance there’s a couple of pan shots early on, one of them is pretty complex that occurs outside the protaganist’s house and i recall thinking at the time ‘now this is what’s cool about this medium, there aren’t many films that attempt something like this’.
Synopsis:
It’s about two scientists, one with the ability to visualize advanced theories related to the power of memory and the human brain, and one with the determination to do whatever it takes to reach a scientific breakthrough. They are both parts of one big puzzle, a puzzle that is a project that poses a bigger danger to humanity than anything else in history, and it’s up to one of them to expose the danger, even if it means putting himself at great risk.
The World Series of Poker is happening right now, this 40th annual event started May 26 and ends July 15th. If you’re like me and not a good poker player but want a couple of tips to get involved in the game, I tracked down a few resources to get you going.
Doyle Brunson is seventy six years old and he says he was up late last night in Vegas. He’s in a $10k game on the 24th day of the World Series of Poker and he just sent out a Tweet. "Still in 10k split," he said. "Didn’t sleep much but feel OK…." Is that an intimate look inside the minute by minute, high-stakes life of a poker veteran – or is that a head-trip of a bluff intended to make his opponents think he could be slow on his game today?
Google’s interest is no doubt peaked piqued given all the buzz over Bing. I admit, Bing brings a couple of things to the table that Google doesn’t, though GOOG needn’t worry about losing significant share any time soon.
