This is my sixth review on MouthShut, not very great but still it means a lot to me. I am not a natural writer but try to write something and as I am an engineer I generally try to talk in terms of facts rather than playing with words. I would like to thanks you all for reading my reviews and appreciating them.
So here it goes…
I came across GuruNet about one month back when I was looking for some online dictionary. Luckily I found GuruNet and since then I have not used any online dictionary.I would like to say that this is a very powerful tool with a lot of interesting features and I love using it.
So what is GuruNet?
(Actually) It is a Reference Answer Engine, in short it is a dictionary cum an encyclopedia(though limited edition is not that big) with information available on wide range of topics.
Its effectiveness can be guessed from the fact it picks the relevant data from over 150 encyclopedias, dictionaries and various organization databases. Some of them include Columbia Encyclopedia, the American Heritage Dictionary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Roget’s Thesaurus, WordNet by Princeton University and many more. That too only on a mouse click. Though the free version is not as vast as its full version, for which you have to pay some fee. But still limited version is good enough for me.
Now I will discuss it features one by one:
Information at a mouse click:The most exciting feature is that you don’t need to type a word into the search field to look it up. You just have to hold the ALT key and click on the word on the screen you want to look in the database. Although there is a separate search field is also available.
The main Window: Upon selecting the word to look up, the main window comes up with the following tabs(tabs depend upon the kind of data available in the database). Few tabs which you can find in the main window are:
-Dictionary: gives the meanings of the word you are looking for. One smart thing here is that you can listen(not read) the pronunciation of the word.
-Technology: If the word is technology related. This section will present some scientific information relating the word.
-Thesaurus: Will give the synonyms for the word. This section also contains idioms containing the word.
-Sign Language: This will explain how to communicate the word using body language. Never looked into it:-)
-Lexicon: This will contain the various meaning of the noun form of the word, with usage examples.
-Translations: Will include the translation of the word in various languages.
-Personalities: If you search for a famous name, this tab will come up.
-Encyclopedia: This tab will come up if the word relates to something in the encyclopedia database.
-History: This tab will show the history associated with the word or personality or an event.(cool no … huge source of knowledge … though not accessible for free version…but you can still get a taste of it for few days by registering on the GuruNet site).
-If you happen to search for a city or a geographical location then the following tabs will show up: Geography, Weather, Local time, Hotels, City map and How?(some of these contain limited data but full version has a lot that you can see by registering once on the site)
-Other tabs could be: Acronym, Investment, Topic book etc etc.
Apart from this main window it also has a small search window(can be placed anywhere on the desktop and is like a small search icon which can be expanded and collapsed at will and does not obstruct the view)
One of the GuruNet’s intelligent features is that while looking for the word you clicked on, it also looks for the words surrounding it gives the appropriate meaning on the context and it even recognizes the idioms.
I wish I could show all you guys all these features but it’s not possible here so you have to go the GuruNet site to experience it.
One of the very interesting features of this tool is the “GuruNet Today” which comes when you first log into the computer or restart the Gurunet. It contains various sections having wide variety of information. I am listing the stuff present under GuruNet Today below:
Personality of the Day
Word of the Day
TopicBook of the Day
Tip of the Day
Weekly Challenge
Today’s News
Today in History
Today’s Birthdays
Though the information under these titles is not much but there are links in the text through which you can access a whole lot of information. In fact it has become my daily habit to follow the interesting links which is adding to my general knowledge.
This section GuruNet Today could be a pain(for some people) as it will slow down the system startup a little bit but still you can choose not to show this on startup to make the startup fast. Later you can access the section by clicking on the *“Home icon” *in the menu bar.
Finally I would like to say that I really loved using tool and will be using it until I came across some better tool. But as for now this tool is giving me everything I want.
So if you felt that this tool can be of some help go to the site https://gurunet.com and download it. Use it and tell me how it is. And last but not the least please rate my review.Thanks.