I love the Kindle’s ability to let me quickly up a strange word.
Whether I’m reading a book or magazine or anything else, I just press a couple of buttons and get the definition from Kindle’s built-in dictionary.
What’s not to like?
Wikipedia-powered lookup: Future improvement?
First off, I’d love to see this streamlined approach include a Wikipedia lookup option as well. Yes, you can already call up Wikipedia on your Kindle. I’m talking about Amazon creating a more effective and direct lookup function within the content, not through the browser.
This would require an Internet connection. But why not take advantage of the Whispernet service that already exists on every Kindle? I sometimes turn the wireless switch off to conserve battery life, or because I’m on a plane. But 95% of the time it’s on and ready for use.
The other reason why Amazon probably didn’t include this initially is an agreement with Sprint on the likely amount of data going back and forth over Sprint’s wireless system. This feature would increase that load but probably not by much. It would be so great to have one-click access to a Wikipedia lookup within every book, magazine, and newspaper, on the Kindle.
If it’s really a financial/load issue, maybe Amazon could consider offering it as a paid service for something like $2/month. I’d sign up and pay for this convenience.
Speedier lookups: Also needed
Secondly, can the existing dictionary lookup be any slower or awkward? Seriously, the first few times I tried this I thought my Kindle had frozen. And why are we forced to do a lookup on every word in the line when I really only care about one? Amazon, please, can you fix this with a software update so that I can choose the word or phrase I want to look up? As an added bonus, maybe the results will display faster if the device is only looking up one word (instead of the entire line).
