Word Of The Day

Even if you are already proficient in a certain language, there are always a lot of words you are not familiar with, and there are desktop applications out there that can help you learn them.

One good example is Word Of The Day, a fairly simple utility that displays a new word on your desktop every hour and reads it with the help of a speech engine. It is unobtrusive, but it could use a few more features.

Getting started with this application is easy, as it does not need to be installed on your computer before use, although you should make sure .NET Framework is available to ensure it functions correctly.

Once launched, the program will be minimized to the system tray automatically, and it is also added to the startup list. If you don’t want it to be launched with Windows, you can disable this option at any time.

Every hour, the program will display a new word in a small window on your desktop, and it will also be read aloud using a text-to-speech engine. Unfortunately, though, it is not possible to customize the interval or disable the text-to-speech feature.

If you want to add new words, the process is not at all complicated. You can either add their definitions manually or just enter the word and have the program look up additional details online.

However, there is no option to add an entire dictionary at once, which would certainly have proven handy, especially for users who want to learn other languages as well.

On the whole, Word Of The Day isn’t the most impressive application we’ve come across, and it would be much easier to recommend if a few things were improved. At present, however, the lack of customization options is a real drawback.