New NY Times Web site feature

There’s a new yet lightly publicized feature at the Web site of The New York Times. I first learned about it from David Knox of the Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal so I’ll let him describe it:

 There's a very interesting new hypertext feature in the New York Times. Double-clicking any word or phrase in a story triggers a popup with one or more dictionary and/or encyclopedia references.
 The Times rolled this out without any fanfare I know of. The only indication is an easy-to-miss sentence tacked on the bottom.
 Apparently the reference lookup hasn't been implemented across the board. I don't see it in style, home or technology features. But it's in every news story I checked — including an AP piece on the pet food recall.
 I'm impressed.

I’m impressed, too, although it doesn’t seem to be as slick as its programmers are aiming at (ergo, the soft launch, I suspect). I’m using IE 6x on WinXP Pro and have Google Desktop installed. With that Google product up and running, you can left-click on anything you highlight or select and then let Google search on the phrase or word selected. Now, back on my Macs, there is no equivalent to Google Desktop (though there are lots of Widgets and Add-ins for Safari and Foxfire Firefox that accomplish many of the same things) so this NY Times thing looks kinda cool.