A quarter-millennium after Dr Johnson published the first-ever English dictionary in 1755, 'the world's first democratically compiled, multimedia online dictionary' has just been launched in Johnson's house in London's Gough Square. The everyone-join-in dictionary is called wordia.com, and is the joint offspring of the television producer Edward Baker and Michael Birch, the internet entrepreneur who founded Bebo, the social-networking site. They've linked up with HarperCollins, the blue-chip publisher owned by Rupert Murdoch, to make use of their electronic dictionary of 76,000 headwords and 120,000 definitions. But the unique selling proposition behind wordia.com is visual: they want to compile an archive of videos in which thousands of members of the public will offer their own definitions of favourite words and have them posted on YouTube, with which Baker and Birch are also in partnership.
http://www.ejc.net/media_news/video_dictionary_word_wide_web/
