our front yard 2 months ago.

wikipedizer update.

A few goings-on in the world of the wikipedizer:

• Gina Trapani grabbed my code and created WikipedizeText -- so now, with a bookmarklet, you can Wikipedize the contents of a textarea. Neato.
• Then I got an email from Willem van Hage, who has been working with a friend on somewhat similar tools:
  • Wikipedize a URL
  • Googlize a URL
  • Websterize a URL
  These take a different approach than my wikipedizer -- they wrap each word with a search href. So their googlizer replaces every word with a link to a google that word. So it's more of a "click it and be surprised" thing.

Since the wikipedizer idea has been pretty well-received, I realized that it needs a few things if it's going to get used.

• It needs a repeatable way to keep the titles database up to date. I don't even know how Stefan populated his titles database; I just used it. I'll drop him a line.
• The "look for linkable phrases" algorithm could be better. It needs to catch [capitalized] single words, and of course it'd be extra nice to get words or phrases that aren't capitalized (that's harder). I need to think about this a little more.