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December 26, 2005

The Hyperwords Plugin

Michael Arrington

21 comments »

I generally don’t write about Firefox plugins, but Hyperwords is one that’s gotten my attention. Like Om says, it’s a must-have product to aid the browsing experience. And I see a business model here, too.

Hyperwords gives users a number of choices whenever a piece of text is selected. The options simply pop up - right click functionality remains unchanged.

Options include searching various engines, looking up text in wikipedia and dictionary.com, emailing text, searching on Google Maps, translation, and searching on Amazon and other commerce sites. The search and commerce traffic will generate revenue (my guess is a dollar or so per year per active user). The translation service is incredibly useful.

If you’d like to beta test Hyperwords, email beta@gethyperwords.com.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, December 26th, 2005 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Tablet PC Blogs : Hyperwords: A plugin for Firefox

    December 26th, 2005 at 1:52 pm

  2. Security

    December 27th, 2005 at 9:43 am

  3. Pay Attention To Me! » SCOOP: Email Conversation with Hyperwords CEO on Future Direction

    December 28th, 2005 at 7:04 pm

Comments

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  1. AdminID

    December 26th, 2005 at 6:56 pm

    Correction… email beta@gethyperwords.COM

    The site is hyperwords.NET, but the email for the beta is GEThyperwords.COM

  2. Cadence

    December 26th, 2005 at 8:22 pm

    So forgive my ignorance but what is so good about HyperWords?

  3. google guy

    December 26th, 2005 at 8:27 pm

    beta@gethyperwords.net.

    doesnt work
    and every1 is jus barfing .. they r showin a menu for each word - who cares
    This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

    Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

    beta@gethyperwords.net

    Technical details of permanent failure:
    PERM_FAILURE: DNS Error: Domain name not found

  4. Smithee

    December 26th, 2005 at 8:33 pm

    What business model do you see for a plug-in to a browser with a growing, but minor share of the market? Most of this functionality already exists in extensions and if they come up with something new it won’t be difficult to duplicate.

    It looks like another cool power tool for cool power users, but it doesn’t look like a business.

  5. Scott

    December 26th, 2005 at 8:47 pm

    Looks promising, and the picture on Hyperwords.net looks good, too, but sending a Beta Request email returns D.O.A.: “PERM_FAILURE: DNS Error: Domain name not found”

  6. Scott

    December 26th, 2005 at 8:53 pm

    Bad email address. Not your fault; the same “beta request” email address is on their website, too (hyperwords.net).

  7. Stacy

    December 26th, 2005 at 9:41 pm

    Hi there,
    I tried to write the e-mail address you supplied but it bounced back.

  8. Stacy

    December 26th, 2005 at 9:49 pm

    Hmmm. I tried to comment earlier but it didn’t go through (sorry if this ends up as a double post). In any case, the e-mail address you provided bounced when I tried it.

  9. Mukul Kumar

    December 26th, 2005 at 10:06 pm

    The email address that you have specified for beta testing hyperwords is incorrect (beta@gethyperwords.net). The correct email address is beta@gethyperwords.com .

    Thanks,
    Mukul.

  10. Don

    December 26th, 2005 at 10:58 pm

    Using Hyperwords right now. Frode & Patricia are obviously responsive, considering they already have a second release out to users with an improved UI.

    I think of it as a plugin aggregator for a lot of the things I do with other plugins for/features of Firefox, ala the search bar plugins, greasemonkey, right-click context menus, etc.

  11. David

    December 27th, 2005 at 8:59 am

    Greetings, Mr. Arrington. I am a long time reader, big time fan, first time writer.

    I believe that…

    “If you’d like to beta test Hyperwords, email beta@gethyperwords.net.”

    should read…..

    “If you’d like to beta test Hyperwords, email beta@gethyperwords.com.”

    CHEERS!

    David

  12. David Evans

    December 27th, 2005 at 9:37 am

    Wordstream did this five years ago and ran out of money just as major media partnerships were coming together. It was a Java app, which was slow, but it worked.

    Remember when Microsoft tried to do this everyone cried foul and they killed the project? Perhaps a benevolent company with a stellar advisory board will fare better.

    Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart and Vint Cerf as advisors, to mention just a few. How long until Google, MS or Yahoo embed it into their toolbar? Definitely a build and flip, At a dollar a user, not much money there and how difficult to open-source? Today’s DHTML and Greasemonkey should make this simple for Safari and other browsers.

    Hopefully they take a page from the Blummy playbook and let us add our own arbitrary services, especially translation links. Maybe I don’t want to necessarily use a service you have a revenue sharing deal with that doesn’t function as I want it to?

    Looking forward to checking out the beta.

  13. JD

    December 27th, 2005 at 10:39 am

    From what I remember Hyperwords is pretty old. It failed as a server side idea back in the day. As a firefox extension I think this would be pretty useful.

  14. Michael Arrington

    December 27th, 2005 at 12:26 pm

    Sorry about the email issue, everyone. I believe it is correct now.

  15. stealbelow

    December 28th, 2005 at 7:08 pm

    I wrote to Hyperwords CEO 6 days before your original post with a suggestion which you can read on my blog.

    He wrote back this “Yes, would be cool…You are about 1 year ahead of us, we can’t really deal with ___________ yet, just ________, but yes, agree with your direction.”

  16. Wai Yip Tung

    December 29th, 2005 at 2:38 pm

    Whenever someone mention a new Firefox feature I seems to have the same comment — I have been using this in Opera for a long time already.

  17. Wai Yip Tung

    December 29th, 2005 at 2:41 pm

    Whenever a new Firefox feature is mentioned I seems to come up with the same comment — I have already been using this in Opera for a long time!

  18. Tinus

    December 30th, 2005 at 1:07 am

    This isn’t original, everybody with a little knowledge of Firefox and XUL can make this, and if there’s a businessmodel: They simply won’t make any money..

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