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  <title>Comments for gurunet and pervasive hyperlinking</title>
  <subtitle>A Blog About Making Culture</subtitle>
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    <id>tag:www.dashes.com,1999:/anil//1.43</id>
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    <published>1999-09-10T16:00:01Z</published>
    <updated>2005-08-12T06:49:23Z</updated>
    <title>gurunet and pervasive hyperlinking</title>
    <summary>An interesting experiment in pervasive hyperlinking is taking place at GuruNet. (No relation to guru.com) What they make is a small program, sort of like...</summary>
    <author>
      <name>Anil</name>
      <uri>http://anildash.com/</uri>
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      <![CDATA[<p>An interesting experiment in <strong>pervasive hyperlinking</strong> is taking place at <a href="http://www.gurunet.com">GuruNet</a>. (No relation to <a href="http://www.guru.com">guru.com</a>) What they make is a small program, sort of like a browser plug-in, that lets you Alt-click on a word in <em>any</em> Windows application (not just browsers) and get information on that word.</p>
<p>Right now, the information is mostly limited to <strong>dictionary definitions</strong>, but I'm sure down the road the database of hyperlinks and other resources will vastly expand. The app also has a <strong>great pedigree</strong>, with one of the key investors being Mark Tebbe, who was founder of <a href="http://www.lante.com">Lante</a>, and, until his recent departure, was one of my favorite columnists at <a href="http://www.infoworld.com">InfoWorld</a>.</p>
<p>I think there's still more than a few <strong>user interface inadequacies</strong> to be resolved in the program, but its potential makes it well worth the small download. However, the biggest flaw that I can see in this program is that there is no accommodation for <strong>user-supplied links</strong>. The best way to tap the potential of a program like this is to allow for the community of users to <strong>contribute to its value</strong>.</p
<p>My suggestion would be a <strong>three-tiered system</strong>. At the narrowest, and highest-quality, level, only GuruNet-supplied links would be available upon clicking a word, with all links entered and verified by their staff. Limited, sure, but also more likely to be useful.</p>
<p>At the second level would be a <strong>filtered user-supplied directory</strong> of links. Perhaps through a cross-licensing with the database of the <a href="http://www.dmoz.org">Open Directory</a> or <a href="http://www.about.com" title="Formerly the Mining Company">About.com</a>, or simply through editing links suggested by GuruNet users, a high-quality, high-volume database of links could be added to the program.</p>
<p>At the lowest quality, but with the highest quantity, of links would be a <strong>totally open</strong> database, either through passing queries to a standard large search engine (<a href="http://www.altavista.com">AltaVista</a>, <a href="http://www.hotbot.com">HotBot</a>, or maybe a more refined one like <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a> or <a href="http://www.northernlight.com">Northern Light</a>.)</p>
<p>Of course, this being a software program, plenty of warnings and &quot;<strong>Are you sure?</strong>&quot;s would have to be added, so that people would realize they were opening up the potential of spam and advertising, etc. I'm assuming that <strong>advertising on GuruNet Alt-clicks</strong> is already part of their long-term revenue model.</p>]]>
      
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