Babylon

Babylon is a handy tool to find the meaning of a particularword, to find more about a particular topic, to translate words into a languageof your choice, and to convert different measurement units, time zones, orcurrencies. You’ll find this software on the CD this month.

To install the utility, just follow the on-screeninstructions. Here, you can set Babylon to run at Windows Start-up and configuremouse settings to activate it. You can also specify whether you’d connect tothe Internet through a modem or a LAN, the languages in which you want resultsto appear, and voice settings if you’d like to listen to your results, etc.

Once installed, Babylon sits in the system tray. You canaccess the configuration by right clicking it there, and selectingConfiguration. As a first step, you’ll need to install glossaries, which theutility will use to gather information about the word or topic you enter. Thiscan be done from Glossary in Babylon’s menu. This gives you three options–installingglossaries from the Babylon index, installing them from a disk, and buildingyour own glossary, which you can then share with other Babylon users. The firstof these takes you to Babylon’s Website–www.babylon.com–thatprovides you with lists of glossaries on various topics. These includedictionaries–both English-English and other languages–for translation, aswell as specialized glossaries on topics like Business and Economy, Computersand Internet, Science and Technology, Society and Culture, etc. You can chooseto subscribe to these for online usage, or download them on your PC for bothonline and offline usage.

To use it, click on any word or number on your screen usingthe mouse settings you’d specified in Babylon’s configuration. Else click ona blank area on your screen using these settings. This will launch the Babylonwindow, and you can type your text or number here. In case of words, Babylonwill look through your installed list of glossaries for details. If you’d liketo exclude some glossaries from a particular search, go to the MyList option inBabylon–which shows a list of your glossaries–and uncheck the ones you don’twant.

The results of your search will be displayed in the Babylonwindow. Click on "more results" to search through glossaries you maynot have installed or subscribed to. In addition, Babylon gives you the optionof searching for your topic of interest on a reference site or search engine onthe Web. You can also save the results generated by Babylon.

When you enter a number, Babylon launches the Converterwindow; or you can go to Convert in the Babylon window and enter your numberthere. The utility lets you convert time zones, currencies, and measurementslike weight, power, temperature, and pressure. You can also launch the Windowscalculator from this window.

Overall, the utility is fast, easy to use, and can be avaluable resource for your daily work.

Pragya Madan