I want to shake your hand. This is probably the best example of utilizing Web 2.0 that isn't ambiguously superficial, no obscenely huge banners, flashing colors of "beta" texts. You're attacking the technology at the core. I congratulate you heartily, sir.
I would promote this service personally by NOT making it social (yet), for one thing. There are lots of possibilities in socializing this type of software, which is truly unique and very helpful for research endeavors; all of them good. This may kill some of the buzz you might get from TechCrunch or Mashable on the blogosphere, as it is a great app but I wouldn't rush to make it social just yet. Find the user incentive to socialize it, understand the needs and demands, then bring in the sheep.
Great job by developing a bookmarklet: you see many blogs out there with autolinking, those double underlined links that popup little hover boxes and kill usability by displaying a screenshot of what they're going to see. Maybe even develop your bookmarklet so that it will bring up a smaller, unobtrusive hoverbox with the page title of where you're going (eg. Wikipedia: Tibet) for the end user.
You are correct in estimating that not very many people would find this useful. You may target it at education based blogs, or even yes, wikipedia editors. I know one guy who was just elected to an editor position and I'll be more than willing to ask him if he'd find any use in it.
Finally, commercialization really should be your last thought. 37Signals put it best, solve your problems first and the rest will fall into place. Build to solve problems, not create new ones with financing.
Just my two cents. Awesome application overall, I'm very impressed overall, most notably at your method of attack; sticking with the core technologies and solving a problem from a different angle. Color me surprised if your work goes unnoticed by the big wigs out there.
I'm not even sure how to make it social, so that's certainly not high on my list of things that need to be done. A lot of the design is such as it is because I was scratching my own itch, and I have no love of in-your-face UIs (I didn't fully succeed here, but I can't justify a lot more work unless I get some actual traffic.)
To make it social, let people define other (non-wikipedia) documents that are tied to terms, at least for linking up their own work. This will make it more useful for SEO, and specific unique domains. Then let people share wordlists, and select wordlists to use on a per-post basis (or maybe your code already has the smarts for this.) The result should be that if I write a post about an arcane topic, the jargon is linked to my favorite references on the subject.
Something to consider: instead of embedding direct links, use redirection so you get a record of every time a link is clicked on.
If you have the need for such a designer, I'm open for contracts or would be more than willing to outsource the work to some of my associates in case I get tied up by then.
I want to shake your hand. This is probably the best example of utilizing Web 2.0 that isn't ambiguously superficial, no obscenely huge banners, flashing colors of "beta" texts. You're attacking the technology at the core. I congratulate you heartily, sir.
I would promote this service personally by NOT making it social (yet), for one thing. There are lots of possibilities in socializing this type of software, which is truly unique and very helpful for research endeavors; all of them good. This may kill some of the buzz you might get from TechCrunch or Mashable on the blogosphere, as it is a great app but I wouldn't rush to make it social just yet. Find the user incentive to socialize it, understand the needs and demands, then bring in the sheep.
Great job by developing a bookmarklet: you see many blogs out there with autolinking, those double underlined links that popup little hover boxes and kill usability by displaying a screenshot of what they're going to see. Maybe even develop your bookmarklet so that it will bring up a smaller, unobtrusive hoverbox with the page title of where you're going (eg. Wikipedia: Tibet) for the end user.
You are correct in estimating that not very many people would find this useful. You may target it at education based blogs, or even yes, wikipedia editors. I know one guy who was just elected to an editor position and I'll be more than willing to ask him if he'd find any use in it.
Finally, commercialization really should be your last thought. 37Signals put it best, solve your problems first and the rest will fall into place. Build to solve problems, not create new ones with financing.
Just my two cents. Awesome application overall, I'm very impressed overall, most notably at your method of attack; sticking with the core technologies and solving a problem from a different angle. Color me surprised if your work goes unnoticed by the big wigs out there.