Scoble: ActiveWords doesn't do what Chris said it does. It doesn't change words. You program in your own words. There is no user interface. You need to type in words and hit a hot key (or push space twice, or do something that you tell the system you want to do). I talk about this here. [comment page on Doubt's Log]

Ok, Lets leave activewords out of it... but reading Scoble's response, I want to comment:  First, Smarttags in IE wasn't meant to be on by default. It was turned on in a ealy beta as a way to get some coverage in the wild for the feature, but it wasn't meant to ship that way. Second, I still don't buy the "getting in between the author and the reader" arguement, since plugins that do so will get turned off by the reader. Utilities stay and get used only to the degree that they add value for the end user. If the user is reading your site, it's a safe bet that they want to read your content and he/she won't tolerate something that distorts it. Third, I miss the potential of the idea. It's every other week or so, a place that the technology would be useful for me pops up. Yesterday, it was stuff like a dictionary lookup on words I don't know the definition to. A week ago it was generating entries into my calandar when a date and time is specified. The week before it was making keyhole's earthviewer go to an address, coordinates, or a city+state when one shows up on a web page. Today I imagine that I could have started this weblog entry by a smarttag that understand individual items on scoble's weblog, understand what blog software I use, and gives me an option similar to radio's "post" link. I'm still a bit disappointed that some peoples' reactions were so violently against it that they couldn't see the good stuff, and try to find a middle ground that makes everyone happy.
2:27:04 PM    comments ==