I considered calling this type of post a “Cool Product Pick of the Week”, a catchy title lifted from Dave Mows Grass. I tried for quite some time to think of an original title. After all, I am an academic, and very aware of the perils of plagiarism. I do not know whether the title is original with DMG, or if he found it somewhere else. His name is definitely catchy, though, and once it was in my head, nothing better could get in. Fortunately, my product is the Visual Thesaurus, so I could use the product itself to help create a title for the post about the product. What do you think of it? (to get snazzy, I had to move an extra generation away from cool….somehow fashionable and stylish didn’t seem to fit my product of the week…er, hebdomad.) I also couldn’t find a way to incorporate Cartesian Product into my title, but was rather impressed that VT knew about it.
This is a wonderful thesaurus, much better than your standard thesaurus which simply gives a list of words, and exponentially superior to the synonym finder embedded in Word, which doesn’t seem to realize that study is a noun. Contrast Word’s thesaurus with Visual Thesaurus, which not only understands that study can be a noun, but knows it can be a room, a subject area, a bailiwick, a sketch, a written report, any of several musical compositions, as well as state-type nouns like engrossment, immersion, absorption, and concentration.
VT creates a map of your word and all its synonyms and related words, arranged in clusters of related words. If you click on a synonym (or antonym), you get a new map, complete with new clusters, centered upon your new word. Visual Thesaurus will also list the definition of your word, and you can hear your word enunciated correctly by an American or British mechanical voice (your choice). Often you’ll see example sentences, such as “He’s a cool dude” illustrating the various meanings of the word.
The price is only $19.95 a year, which is 2.477% of the cost of one credit hour of graduate research at Texas A&M University. I consider this an excellent deal. If I ever finish my dissertation, I will probably keep my subscription…the pay raise my institution gives for doctoral degrees is not large, but it would suffice to cover VT’s $19.95 yearly fee. Now that I’ve started using this wonderful little tool, I just can’t imagine writing without it!
2 comments:
I am not an academic and I am going to steal "Snazzy Ware Selection of the Hebdomad" as a regular feature on my useless blog without giving you credit because this is the internet and anything goes. Cool thesaurus, though. Maybe I can use it to improve my "Recondite Quips and Hockey Fight Clips" feature, but I doubt it. Some writing ideas fail just fine on their own without getting all cutesy.
You made my day!
Glad you liked it!
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