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Free online dictionary

Constantin Bosneaga — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:56:55 +0000

It is web based, ajax, searches through 100M+ words very fast.

Source code is available on request. More details are here http://a32.me/2010/06/phpmydict-stardict-web-backend-with-php/

phpMyDict – Stardict web backend with PHP

Constantin Bosneaga — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 15:27:41 +0000

Stardict is a popular open source dictionary program as well as file format for storing dictionaries. There are alternatives of StarDict, some of them better, some worse. But I never meet some WEB application to use dictionaries in StarDict format and interface through the web browser. I found this little interesting and created one...

It is written in PHP and uses MySQL as database backend, client part uses jQuery for AJAX queries. Dictionaries are indexed in admin part for quick access. By now searches through 2 mil words takes about half of the second. Interface is as simple as possible and was inspired by GoldenDict. For sample usage it contains Russian-English and English-Russian dictionary(Universal, Computer, Oil, Gas...)

Try to access it here http://a32.me/other/dict/

Comments are welcome. If I have more time and some interest to it, will release it open-source .There might be interest to use it in intranet environment.

Additional free dictionaries can be found here:

Launchy – handy application launcher

Constantin Bosneaga — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:48:52 +0000

Windows "Start menu" is not something suitable for daily usage. MS has a long history to make it better, to complete failure in Vista, complex and unusable. Many other launchers were invented during this time with buttons/toolbars/bookmarks. All of it should make program launching more pleasant, but it does not.

Here comes Launchy.

"Launchy" is keyboard program launcher and I found it the best one. Btw, it is free and opensource and linux version exists.

How does it help ? Well, it works like a charm, just download install and use, no any setup. After installation it automatically scans your HD for program files. When you want to launch your favorite spreadsheet editor just press magic combination (Alt+Space) and type first 2-3 letters of application name.

Not right application selected ? Press down arrow and browse from list. Here comes some magic, Launchy will remember your combination and program you choose, so next time it will be on top of list.

All you need to do is to stroke several keys. I use 30+ applications on my daily basis and it is very handy to launch them this way. I completely forgot of ugly start menu.

Launchy is extended by plugins, which brings nice functionality:

Inline calculator
Acts like a search input box for Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, etc

More screen shots

1. Choosing from list of programs

2. Using calculator

3. Wiki search

Links: