Visual Thesaurus
© 2004 Plumb Design
Available free on the web, or for $30 as a desktop version, this is a dynamic word map creator. In other words, you can type in any word, such as child, and quickly see a web of related words floating in space around the word (kid, tike, rug rat and so on). It's cool, but would you use it? This is the key question -- an "old fashioned" thesaurus does much the same thing, if your goal is to quickly find alternative meanings to a word. What this does that other programs can't, is to show the dynamic web of meaning around each word -- this might be useful for brainstorming sessions (say to find a name for a project) or for showing a class of middle school children how word families work. There are a variety of display options built in to the desktop version, such as the ability to change font size, an autopilot feature and so on. Also, we noticed that performance is faster with the installed version vs. the free web based version. Have a look at http://www.visualthesaurus.com. Note: this product can be find embedded in other products, such as Encyclopedia Britannica. It was created using software called "thinkmap."
$29.95, Windows, Macintosh
Teaches: language, word relationships, reading, spelling