After months of operation and seeing things working out, I would say that our invention, Instant Lookup, introduced in Trillian 3 Series, placed Trillian in the forefront of the Internet revolution. As suggested by the CNet Article, Instant Lookup can contribute to the development of the semantic web with its context-awareness – the ability to look inside a word and read between the lines.

The base idea of Instant Lookup came from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s electronic eye in Terminator 2: if Arnold’s vision is focused on a subject, data about that subject came out immediately to help his investigation. Same here in the midst of a real-time online chat conversation. Though our technology is not developed to a degree that lets you scan and recognize objects, our technology nowadays definitely allows you to scan a word and find tons of knowledge about it through Google, Wikipedia, or whatever it is.

A chat is an exchange of knowledge between two people. Since chat is real-time, there is an urgency to know what an unknown word means right away. Usually a question about the unknown word will be raised, but Instant Lookup cuts this part of conversation short while allowing the topic to go deeper by giving preliminary knowledge about the unknown.

A lot of times the Internet is about taking a nice technology to combine with advertisements to generate money. Instant Lookup is the reverse: We referenced the idea of context-aware links, usually known as ‘adwords’, but instead of giving you tons of ads about mundane words, we provide you knowledge or useful links about special words. A surprising by-product is formed: Instant Lookup is also a tool of discovery. It allows users to read the objective meanings behind what the other has said, what he or she has said, and lets them learn new things every day from the Web, just through chatting.

It makes me wonder how much one can discover through this tool. After centuries of accumulation of knowledge, there is so much within a single word. With more improvements coming up in future, I hope that Instant Lookup will become one good essential tool that many can’t miss.