Friedbeef’s Tech

Imagine looking up any topic with a single mouse click from any application. No need to pop open a browser, look it up on Google, or even visit a website.

Some time ago I wrote about One-Click Answers from Firefox, and how easy it was to use. I’ve recently revisited this free plugin by the Answers.com crew and was pleasantly surprised to see how far they’ve taken this concept.

What it is:

Just Hold Down the Alt Key and Mouse-click on any word, and it will get looked up on the Internet instantly. No opening browsers, no copy & pasting into Google, no hassle.

3 Things I Loved:

1. All search results are now Inline, meaning it does not open a browser window to display your information. It just pops right up.
2. Integration with Windows and OSX documents. You can now instantly lookup items not just in Firefox, but in IE, Notepad, Word, PowerPoint, and other files on your PC.
3. It recognises the surrounding text around my Alt-click and applies context to it. For example, by Alt-clicking on the word ‘coast’, it can accurately guess if I’m talking about Coast Guards, or the West Coast, depending on the sentence the word is being used in.

2 Things That Could Be Improved:

1. I could not get it to work with PDF files.
2. Comes bundled with too many items that I don’t need. Yes, you can turn them off via the options menu, and I understand the need for them especially since Answers.com is giving this tool away for free, but I’m not a big fan of toolbars, and ‘daily highlight’ popups. Let me emphasise though, that all this can be turned off easily.

Try it if you want a…

• Faster way of looking up information
• Reliable source of information (Answers One Click results come from authoritative sources)
• Safe place for your kids to get information, sheltered from inappropriate, incorrect, outdated and offensive content.