I have kind of mixed feelings about this next one – up until 2 days ago one of my absolute favourite system tray apps was called Atomica. Atomica returned results of an online dictionary lookup from a word clicked in absolutely any open application. In addition it offered you other suggested words in a thesaurus pane, as well as an encyclopedia definition and technical definitions for tech terms. You could get any of these from specific online sources, but the beauty of this was the one-click feature. It really was a beautiful little application.
Then two days ago, I ‘one clicked’ a term in a document I’d just received and got hit with a message telling me that the service I’ve long enjoyed for free is now being replaced by something called ‘GuruNet’ and that I’m going to have to pay $39 bucks a year for it! After looking into it further, it turns out there is still a free version of the product (linked to above). And it mostly works like the old one, except now I have to put up with ads, an ugly interface and a diminished set of resources to refer against, issues I can dispose of for $39 bucks a year. Oh well, I guess it was naive of me to think it could last for free, at least in its relatively unadulterated form. Time will tell if I keep the new ad-ware supported version installed. So not necessarily a ringing endorsement, but functionaly still worth checking out. – SWL