Cool new feature: “Answer-Tips”

As you may know, one of the reason’s I’m doing this site (besides wanting to stay in better touch with you all!) is to improve my web-skills. I’m planning on starting my PhD one of these days, and key to my proposed idea is creating and maintaining a blog. So, all the effort I put into this site pays off later on when it comes to my doctorate.

WordPress (the blogging system that powers this site) is an open-source deal, meaning that anyone with an idea and ability to improve the system can do so. There are literally thousands of “plug-ins” that improve a site’s functionality in some way. I’ve grown fond of browsing through the WordPress plug-in directory, looking for cool stuff to make this site better. There are just so many amazing bells and whistles out there! It’s been really fun to experiment with some of them.

This brings me to today’s topic: I’d like to introduce a very cool new feature called “Answer-Tips“. This plug-in adds a virtual dictionary to each and every page on this blog. By clicking on any word, a little pop-up window will appear with a definition, like this:

See what happened when I double-clicked on “Toyama”? A window from the reference site Answers.com popped up with a definition of Toyama. Not only can you read about what a word means, but you can click on the little speaker icon and hear it pronounced. Very cool! I’m geeking out…

So, I hope you enjoy this feature. It’s a cool thing knowing you’ll always be able to know what means what.

Oh, just for fun: Try clicking on my wife’s name- Shinobu. The definition that comes up is a real goof. Bonus points to anyone who has heard of them.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed and get new content delivered to you automatically (Subscribe menu > Subscribe to content | comments).