Wednesday, March 22, 2006

I still grit my teeth whenever I come across a "shovelware" online news story that doesn't provide any links. I understand the value of keeping visitors on your site, but these days depriving people of direct access to further information isn't likely to endear any site to its audience.

Here's a new way to provide much of the value of external links, without directing readers away from your site. A March 19 Online Journalism Review article, "Making smarter readers: Lessons in Trilliscience," by Ray Grieselhuber, explains "Trilliscience" -- the "omniscient" functionality offered by the Instant Lookup feature of Cerulean Studios' popular IM chat client Trillian.

Here's how OJR describes that feature: "Every word that users type in their chat session is scanned and compared against Wikipedia's database of articles. If a word or phrase matches the title of an article on Wikipedia, that keyword or phrase is underlined in the chat window. When the user hovers over the link with the mouse, a small window (tooltip) displays the first few paragraphs of the entry. It's a simple but potentially revolutionary innovation."

Obviously, this innovation has far broader applications than mere chat. OJR continues:

"...Readers may not be actively searching for new content, but in those instances where their curiosity or lack of knowledge on a topic would normally switch them into active mode, Web sites can now provide instant gratification to that impulse. And Trilliscience lets publishers do that without losing the reader."

Trillian has chosen to integrate with Wikipedia, but news organizations or other online publishers could choose other resources -- even their own archives and databases.

Personally, I'd love it if someone would write a Firefox Web browser plugin (Mac-flavored, please!) to provide Trilliscience for any site, or for e-mail I'm reading via my Web-based mail client. As long as I could switch it on and off easily, I'd find it more useful than opening numerous browser tabs -- which is what I end up doing now.

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