Answers.com offers a nice little feature to be installed on blogs and site which will help the readers understand the jargons bloggers and webmasters often use in their write-ups.

This application can also be a part of your Firefox and work on any site you visit or by installing a desktop software this feature starts working on any application running on your computer.

AnswerTips for Blogs and Sites:

The service is called AnswerTips. Double click on a word on any AnswerTips enabled webpage and a balloon pops-up showing you more information on that particular keyword you’ve selected, e.g. Meaning, pronunciation, translation, etc..

Readers can also personalize the information they see on this balloon. They can choose to see Dictionary, Encyclopedias, Synonyms & Antonyms or Translate the word in several languages.

Just click on the personalize link as shown in the image below to change the information you see on the balloon.

Installation is very easy, just copy 3 lines of code and add it to your template code. The best part is that you can choose if you want to add AnswerTips to the whole site by adding the code to the template or just one page by including the code in the post. This works on WordPress blogs, we haven’t tested on Blogspot or Typepad but it should work with those services as well.

The badge you see below shows that the script is installed and you can use the functionality by double-clicking on any word.

For example if you double click on any word on this page you will see the information balloon but not anywhere else on TNerd.com because we’ve included the code in the post and not the template.

Click here to get the code for your blog or site.

AnswerTips for Desktop Applications:

AnswerTips can also be installed as a desktop application to make it work on any application running on the desktop. Once installed, hold down the “Alt” key and click on the word you want to lookup and release the “Alt” key, the balloon shows up with more information. At the time of installation, the application tries to change your default search settings to Answers.com, but Google is quick to block this attempt and notify you about it.

I tried using it on several applications and it worked on all of them, the image below shows AnswerTip working on GTalk.

Click here to download the desktop application

AnswerTips for Firefox:

By installing a Firefox plugin you can make AnswerTips work on all the sites you visit. Unlike the way it works on webpages and desktop applications, in Firefox user will have to select the keyword and select this option from the context-menu (right-click menu).

Click here to download the XPI for Firefox.