

Definr: Incredibly fast dictionary - charzom
http://definr.com/

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kirubakaran
Guys, I wrote a similar tool few months ago:
<http://www.instantwordsearch.com>

It does more than definr (e.g. pattern search). But it was met with
indifference (except on StumbleUpon). Can you tell me where I screwed up?

May be I shouldn't have mentioned that I wrote it as a toy app? (but it IS a
toy app) Picture needed? Looks ugly/too simple? Name too long? All I am able
to come up with are some conspiracy theories: 'Definr creator lists Kevin Rose
as _friend_ in his Digg profile'; 'Ruby-On-Rails was mentioned' etc. But the
real issue must be something else.

I think the fault is invisible to me as I created the tool. Hopefully I can
learn a marketing lesson or two from this... Please help.

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sethjohn
I just typed in 'quotidian' to both apps. (It came up this weekend.)

Definr is very fast. It looks up words faster than I type so that the list of
words at the bottom updates with each new letter. With IWS, I had to pause
mid-word for a half-second in order to get an updated list. By the time I got
a choice of words with IWS, I had finished typing and already made a typo.

Also, the interface for Definr is much more friendly looking and simple.
Definr gives you the complete definition on the main page, instead of links to
other definitions. And Definr is an easy name.

Sorry, but I liked Definr much better.

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axod
I'm not sure it's incredibly fast, sure it uses auto-complete and ajax to load
things instead of a page refresh, but it seems a similar speed to conventional
web based dictionaries to me.

~~~
sethjohn
It updates the word list underneath the search bar with every letter
typed...at full speed typing. Since typing speed pretty much defines the
maximum data input speed, I think that qualifies as 'incredibly fast'.

~~~
axod
heh I wasn't that bothered about the 'suggest' feature. You still have to wait
for the definition to appear.

Still cool, but I'm not sure it's much faster (Assuming you don't care about
the suggest functionality).

~~~
sethjohn
I was interested in the suggest feature mostly because I didn't know how to
spell "quotidian"!

Otherwise, the differences are more about presentation than an actual
difference in the technology. I guess I was really just impressed by the user
interface of Definr.

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henning
This cries out to be implemented with Berkeley DB, which is simply much faster
than relational databases.

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corentin
I'm not sure it's useful either. Why not just use a dedicated data structure
(such as a radix tree dictionary)?

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dcurtis
Nothing will ever be faster than hovering over a word and pressing control-
command-D on Mac OS X.

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zach
Sweet. However, the one word I happened to pick for a test (don't know why)
was "spork" -- doh.

At least it wasn't a presentation at YC:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77269>

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void_star
How is this a startup? Auto-complete is NOT hard: it's a trie.

~~~
dfranke
I see no indication that it's intended to be one.

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uuilly
I've been using this one. Easier to type definr though.

<http://www.ninjawords.com/>

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edw519
Making a round trip with each letter typed? Impressive. Who needs a desktop
app?

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pageman
I tried "triumphalism" on the first try. Not yet there :)

