Reviews & Comments of Dictionary of Numbers chrome extension

Unfortunately still broken. Hasn't worked for any number i tried.

I would really appreciate it if the same value was annotated only once in a given page. Also, an interactive element to temporarily disable entries which mess up the readability would be nice.

Been broken for a while.

doesn't give any results. at all.

Overall a great extension, however some of the entries are too technical for daily use. For example, "1 meter" is translated as "≈ wavelength of the lowest UHF and highest VHF radio frequency, 300 MHz", which is something most people (including me) don't understand or use in daily life. It would be better if other practical comparisons were added (like "1 meter ≈ length of a baseball bat" or something).

Works great and gives me a lot of things to compare too. The only thing I would like is a Domain Blacklist, so I can tell it not to work on a website where it messes up the formatting

It's good, but just a couple of issues - as other reviewers have pointed out, some of the comparisons really aren't helpful (wavelengths in particular really aren't something you can visualise!). Also, there are issues with collections of numbers such as LS1 V (an engine number) - DoN reads this as one volt, which isn't really helpful - if a number has a space before the unit, then the program should really ignore the number if it's linked to the previous text.

The only thing keeping me from 5 stars is that you can't configure it to pause/disable on particular domains. Since Chrome syncs everywhere, this can be annoying on my work sites (Jenkins, etc.). Sure, you can pause it, but that's all-or-nothing.

Like the comparisons, helps understanding things and putting stuff into perspective. HOWEVER, when you are a college student writing lots of papers it gets really annoying to have to continually erase the additions it adds to your papers. PLEASE blacklist google drive apps.

Great extension, puts things into perspective

I like this extension. A few suggestions: * Is it possible to implement a feature where you auto-detect foreign timezone and translate it to local timezone? * I prefer pop-up explanation to inline explanation. It would be nice to have that option.

I really wish that it would vary the comparison used rather than always comparing 1 million people to the same exact thing.

I love this app, the only thing that would make it better would be for it to translate currencies.

I like it, but it would be cool if the instant search could also convert measurements.

Great concept, but I wish this extension could offer more customization options, as well as more coverage for metric based information. I also support Clayton Lively's suggestion to implement a highlight-to-view function similar to chrome dictionary. Additionally, it would also be great if the extension is able to whitelist some web pages.

Great concept, however poorly executed. For example, looking at text like "The A-10 Thunderbolt airplane," the extension puts a note between the "A-" and "10." Not very polished, sadly.

The app is definitely amusing and interesting at times, but it can sometimes mess up the formatting of a page(Wikis are a big problem here), and sometimes it cuts into sentences and makes it a bit harder to read. I'd definitely recommend a language chooser and a domain blacklister. It has its flaws, but It's a nice thought-provoking app.

This extension is a combination of helpful, informative and unintentionally hilarious. I really enjoy that it gives equivalents to small numbers, too. I am able to keep track of weight loss in strange terms--I've lost a house cat, a women's shot, then a men's shot! My biggest frustration comes from tables of numbers/data. The dictionary 'definition' stretches the table in odd ways, sometimes leaving it unreadable. I do wish there were more definitions. But I'm sure that will come with time. It would also be useful if we could set a group of units that we're comfortable with (ie, Imperial or metric) and it would convert other units to those (within reason). But now I'm just being picky. I really like this extension as is!

Is is helpful and fun, however it should have options to disable by site (as in I don't want it to change this or that site)

Awesome idea, but its dictionary needs a lot of work. "population of Lesotho" "Speed of wind on exoplanet HD 189733b" "wavelength of the lowest VHF and highest shortwave radio frequency" "A typical value for the specific impulse of current rockets" - these are not useful reference points. I've never heard of Lesotho or HD 189733b, and the second two are needlessly technical. (However, the fact that there exists a planet with wind speeds of over 2 km/s is interesting to know.)

An extremely fun app. Found out about it reading xkcd blog.

Some of my favourite observations from the dictionary of numbers: Reading about how intelligent people panic when given a simple math problem, I was informed that an example of this is the problem "Fred travels at 50mph for 30 minutes, how far does he go?" can generate responses like "5000 miles [~diameter of dwarf planet Pluto". Better yet, I researched the value that governments placed on the statistical value of human life (a strange enough topic to begin with) . Dictionary of Numbers compared it to such things as 1965 typical CEO pay, most expensive car production in 2011, cost of a small hospital, and best of all, a 30-second Superbowl advertisement.

Once in a while it puts velocity comparisons in for my acceleration values in my physics homework. (e.g. "10.9 m/s [≈ Average speed of Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt while setting the 100m world record in Berlin on 16 August 2009.]2".

This app is rather amusing, but with some weird mistakes. 1. It fails to recognize scientific notation: 8.06*10^72 years is not anything close to the human's life expectancy (80 does not equal 8060000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000). It just sees the "72 years" and ignores the prior "8.06*10^". 2. It has no blacklist for websites. Sometimes, games played on the internet are interpreted as units by this app. Sometimes, it even thinks it is looking at a different unit (i.e. Hit Points vs. horse power). Otherwise, it is quite fun to toy around with.

Amazing. It really does allow one to garner a better perspective and understanding about what the numbers you come across each and every day actually entail. It's no longer just reading random numbers and thinking to yourself "Well, that's a big number" or "well that's not a whole lot." This extension really is amazing and helps you to understand the actual scale of the world around us. 5/5

Only problem I have with it is that it picks up things like "9A" within a hexadecimal string, resulting in something like "AF9A [≈ 230 V AC, Toaster, kettle, 2 kW]52"

It would be helpful if you could choose to disable this extension on a single webpage or domain, like adblock does. For instance, if I'm looking at a weather website that includes windspeed it injects the text beside every single speed, which can break the layout of the page.

Useful but needs a toggle to not repeat a definition in the same webpage.

Sometimes it's very true to its purpose like when it compared the described size of a grenade to the size of a golfball, but it keeps on showing weird references to wavelengths that are absolutely no help (to me at least) at all. Also, I'm pretty sure it can't register numbers that are written out, like one hundred and thirteen. Ignoring that, I think it's useful and neat. :) Personally, I think they should just remove all comparisons to wavelengths.

This slow down the loading time of any image search on google. Please fix it.

In most cases, especially in english written text, it's beautiful. However, sometimes it happens, that if you've got a string of letters and numbers (like IDs on 4chan) or if you've got a number, a space, and a word afterwards, the extension takes a look at the first letter of the word only, so it can sometimes look like this: "Člen strany z Prahy 5 V [≈ USB power, used for example to charge a cell phone or a digital camera]áclav Novák na Twitteru uvedl, ..." (while it's obvious from the context that the 5 belongs to the words before it, and V is just the first letter of the name Vaclav) and it just feels like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick, especially if I'm reading something in a different language than english. I would suggest the possibility of the extension "asking," if it is really the end of the string before a space. Otherwise, it is cool as hell, though.

I love this app but it would be much better with UK support (£ doesn't register.)

Could use an option to turn off numbers we know well. 1-10ft, 1-10m, etc. However, otherwise helps put big numbers in context. Occasionally gets amusing when you're reading about a county's population and it tells you that the number is roughly equal to that country's population.

Very useful. I would like a way to disable for specific URL's. It can make it hard to read pages that have many numbers (like a page on yahoo finance). I would like to not have to manually disable and re-enable the extension.

Clever, but a little limited.

This was exceptionally fun when reading the xkcd blog on this: Dictionary of Numbers helpfully informs me that 300,000 acres [≈ Hong Kong] is about the area of LA or Hong Kong. It might turn the phrase “315 million people [≈ population of United States, nation]” into “315 million people [≈ population of United States, nation] [≈ the population of the United States]“. The telescope has been criticized for its budget of $200 million [≈ Mitt Romney assets in 2011] [≈ Mitt Romney net worth].” Just thought this was a funny quirk.

I rather like the app, but I find it a tad too intrusive at times. It helps a lot with putting numbers into perspective, but it has a tendency to also try small numbers (like $250). If it could be limited to large numbers that would be fantastic; as it is, it's still pretty sweet.

I like seeing the facts popping up here and there, but it definitely messes up some sites with extra numbers. I would like it if, without typing in a metric, it would suggest different types of metrics for me to use (depending on whether there's something close to the number I want to search).

Fun little app, not overly intrusive and good for unconsciously learning to put numbers in perspective Makes looking at used cars interesting... amazing how many cars have driven the diameter of Jupiter.

Barely any entries in the dictionary. Couldn't even find what's "9 mm" or "2 m", and the entries that are there just suck: "60000 kg" (I couldn't input 60 tonnes) gives something about a meteorite barely anyone have ever seen. Meteorites can have all kinds of shapes and sizes, it's an awful unit. How about a tank? The approach itself is fundamentally flawed. It should be a unit converter with units like buses, Alaskas and Eiffel towers, not a dictionary! Also, historic data from wikipedia would be nice when the extension detects years/dates.

Very interesting, but we need a way to disable it for particular web sites. I don't need it inserting commentary in the middle of my financial portfolio, thanks.

Good idea, but there should be domain blacklisting (eg. online retail actually gives you prices: "$450 for x item [~~ x item cost]") and add a lot more... lot more... comparisons please.

It's a very good idea, but it would be even better if I could disable it on some specific domains such as e-commerce sites.

useful for some information, but often it just returns random trivia, and oddly specific statements: 700 watts [≈ approximately the amount of sunshine falling on a square metre of the Earth's surface on a clear day in March for northern temperate latitudes] sometimes its useful, but really, i don't think there is a single situation in which the amount of sunshine falling on a square meter of the Earth's surface on a clear march day in northern temperate latitudes would provide any kind of reference. Also, noted by Adam Sutton, it often makes self-referential statements, like: The diameter of the moon is approximately 3475 km [≈ diameter of the Moon] (i understand that this would likely be difficult to fix, but it gets a bit strange sometimes.

Certain measurements are plain wrong. e.g. 70 kg [≈ Large dog]

Great idea, but really needs some currency conversion, so that it can find comparisons to the USD value of money in GBP, for example.

it becomes rather amusing when reading anything about physics: "The Milky Way is moving at around 552 km/s [≈ Speed of the Milky Way, relative to the cosmic microwave background.]" and "at the equator the earth has an eastward velocity of 0.4651 km/s [≈ Speed of Earth's rotation at the equator.]" but all in all, i find it fun and cheers up news and science articles, i would recommend using it with some form of xkcd substitution extension as well; makes for a fun read about the average speed of an atomic cat

Good idea, but not really helpful and sometimes too US-centric for non-American users.(References to Superbowl, costs of election campaigns etc.) Attention for French (or German) texts, as the app doesn't recognize a floating comma. For example, it pretends that a laptop of "1,39kg" (=1.39kg) weights as much as a "Mature lion". :)

Awesome idea, could use better implementation. (same value twice, option to turn off for certain domains, unnecessary trivia $1000, 5 miles) Perhaps a similar function to the chrome dictionary which looks up things that are highlighted by the user would improve this. It is a more on demand approach and would give multiple reference points as the manual search function already does.

Not too helpful, and very bad with weight/mass/speed/time measurements. The novelty wears off quickly. But an awesome idea, would love to see the final product when a lot more has been added.

It's generally quite good, but it does sometimes get in the way. I wish that there was a quick pause feature, or a hotkey or something. Otherwise, I highly recommend it.

Works great on the toolbar, but the app keeps crashing whenever I visit a new page with numbers that would theoretically get appended with info. Running Windows 7 on a Sony VAIO VPCS111FM laptop

I liked it, but you need to do something about possible redundancy, it's a little annoying to read "Tornadoes can reach speeds up to 300mph[≈ Wind speed of a powerful tornado.]", please do something about this. What would also be nice is a mouse over option.

After using this for a couple days i realized it is not actually that great. Its much too heavy-handed in its approach - things like article titles should not be annotated, I don't need to be informed that every common dollar amount (e.g. $500) is nearly the value of the same thing that I already know how valuable it is. Also, it doesn't make sense to replace the same value twice in a page, especially if the example is the same for both (e.g. The playstation 4 will sell for $399 [~ price of a playstation 3, 2006]. The xbox one will also sell for $399 [~ price of a playstation 3, 2006]. its annoying.

This is a great app overall, but I'd LOVE to be able to have it turned off by default on some pages. For example, the bookkeeping pages for our company are filled with this trivia. It's hard to work with dollar amount line items with the [=] beside them all. Other than that, I love it!

This is amazing, love the sense of scale it gives you.

This is a great app. Could there be something for years as well? I don't always know my history, so I might forget what some major events of 1935 or 1675 were.

I really like this, but can we have the ability to disable certain websites. If I load a google document for editing it adds things to the document, which can be a bit of a pain.

I really like this, but an option to set a minimum that it kicks in at would be great. I don't need context for dollar amounts below 2000 for example

I really like the concept, and the extension is well done, but I think it could be improved. I'd like to see some customization options, such as a list of URLs to ignore.

The search function seems to only work in meters and multiples of 10, but the inline markup function is great, esp. for Wikipedia.

Yeah, it's not working for me, incl. after restarting browser. Not sure why.

Only one problem, it does not pick up units like one atmosphere or 100kP

Fantastic. However, some feedback on a slightly different bent to most people here: 1. Most of the stats are very US heavy, and don't seem terribly relevant from the point of view of an Australian. Maybe we can have some more global statistics? 2. If a number is repeated twice (or indeed, ten times) in one webpage, it makes sense that you don't need to contextualise it every time. Once for each number would be great. Keep up the good work :)

Very good and informative but many time on technical site with a lot of number it gets intrusive and difficult to distinguish the numbers you are interested in. Would like an option to disable it per website (whitelist) or as many are suggesting on MouseOver

Very cool plugin. I docked one star because you cannot disable on specific sites, you have to pause it entirely. I frequent sites that it becomes intrusive, so instead of having to pause, reload, view, then unpause is much more cumbersome then adding the site to an ignore list. If this were implemented it would be perfect for me.

Awesome but somewhat intrusive with text added , would be better with some sort of mouseover instead, and set units to metrics.

This is a really neat extension. I agree with others that a mouse-over option would be a great addition. Two places where it's especially interesting: online banking and /r/progresspics. I love knowing that my entire checking account would buy me a year's worth of cigarettes...or seeing that someone has lost the equivalent of a large dog in weight.

Awesome! Although I'd really like a feature (as mentioned by others in the comments) which would only display it on a mouse over, maybe with a non-intrusive icon next to the word to show which ones actually trigger something.

Great idea and I love it - especially since I work with a lot of numbers. A really good improvement, though, would be a setting to change the effect - would be great, say, to allow number context to appear on hover, as there's several cases where the resulting output is totally unreadable.

I love the idea behind this, but I wish there was a setting to choose what range of numbers you want context for. I don't really need to to tell me how much $1,000 is, but $1 million is interesting.

Doesn't work. Simply does nothing. A shame because it's a cool idea.

Love the idea behind this extension, it's fun, interesting and helpful. For a 5-star review it definitely needs a whitelist/blacklist feature as I find it tends to break the BBC Good Food website quite badly, which I use often.

Fun, but it gets very repetitive. Maybe there could be a setting to learn which facts have been read a few times already? Also needs whitelist and to stay paused when Chrome is restarted (I'm on Chrome stable, OS X).

Please let us whitelist sites! Otherwise, very useful and interesting.

I love it, especially when it gets things wrong. e.g. 16 years [≈ time since the appearance of Homo sapiens, approximately] Apparently, no one who is 17 years or older is even human. This seems wrong but I can't put my finger on it...maybe I haven't evolved hands yet Apart from a couple of other ones it's been pretty useful though.

This has a lot of potential. Two things I'd like to see however. One is Black/Whitelists so you can either exclude sites or set it to only work on certain sites instead. The next is perhaps some contextual information based on geographical information. For example - it defaults to mainly US centric information; but if you are looking on say a German site - it would be better if it gave comparisons based on German population/economy etc. I think with more input sources this is going to be a fantastic addon!

It's pretty good already, my only complaint being that more conversions would be appreciated, and that when a number is repeated multiple times the same conversion pops up, which is irritating.

Needs more numbers.

Not bad, however it definitely needs -an option to disable displaying the same data more than once(e.g. $100-$110) -blacklist -better layout

Great idea, but sometimes it's overeager in giving you numbers, inserting them in the middle of nonsense strings and URLS. Also, lately it's been very buggy and has been altering the alignment of text on a lot of web pages in places that don't even have numbers. I'm assuming there is some underlying code that is being modified to include numbers, but has the effect of messing up what IS visible... Some of this could be helped if there were white/black lists of sites the extension would work on, and instead of pausing and having to reload a webpage, just have a pause/automatic refresh/automatic resume on leave page.

I agree with another reviewer that it would be helpful if you could turn off the Dictionary for certain sites such as online bank accounts and brokerage accounts. Other than that, it's fun to see it in use.

Does what it says but quite often does some rather silly transformations: 40 pounds (£GBP) is suddenly equivalent to the size of a large dog and a 25C heatwave is the equivalent charge found in a thundercloud. Some more precise reference points would be useful especially in the more common value brackets.

Love the concept. While the comparisons given isn't usually directly related to the topic and numbers currently being read about, it's still great trivia tidbits.

I really like the idea but it needs more price points and I would love it if it could also worked for currencies other than American Dollars.

Crashes, constantly! DOES NOT WORK.

Pop Up crashes if you try to use it.

It's an interesting concept, and it sort of works... but it's way to sensible. I feel like just adding some basic filters would improve it a lot. It breaks words and URLS because something stupid like lkjasioj2A in a youtube url. (that would be interpreted as 2 amps). Why not just add a filter to recognize spacing in a sentence? Another flaw is that I keep seeing the same reference points. Any number that ranges from $70-$130 seems to give the same product comparison. It should be a lot more specific, especially with lower numbers. I agree with some of the other users, it would be great with some options, such as letting us hover the unit and the reference point would pop up next to it. In conclusion, this has a lot of potential, but it's way too sensitive and obstructing in the long term.

Interesting add-on, but it needs a "Blacklist" so I can turn it off for maps and banking sites. Google directions are much more cluttered when they are full of references to the height of Mt. Everest and the width of the Straits of Gibraltar.

Very cool app. I love some of the comparisons, really gives you a good point of reference. But, doesn't return any number I search.

Great! One issue is it doesn't recognize American times, and instead reads A.M. as Amps (The colon in 4:21 should have given that away as not just being 21A, and A.M. is one part, not just A period) 06/27/2013 4:21 A [≈ 230 V AC, Immersion heater (4.6 kW)].M.

This is very useful. 1 issue I have with it is that it breaks the flow of reading... perhaps an option to only show hint when you hover over the number?

Confirming what everyone else is saying: this does not work on Chrome 27.0.1453.93 on Ubuntu 13.04, Raring Ringtail

I like the start/stop button, but the plugin does not seem to function for me, perhaps because I'm using Linux.

Wish it worked on amazon and other shopping sites..

Doesn't return any number I search.

I dig it a lot. It's mostly seamless, but I wish I could exclude certain websites

This is great, and works very well. That said, I wish it had two options: 1. Show me a certain comparison only once per page, even if the same or similar number appears later. 2. Let me turn it off on some websites permanently.

Probably unintended:.) "The A380-800 has a design range of 15,700 kilometres , and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h [≈ Typical cruising speed of a modern jet airliner, e.g. an Airbus A380.] or 560 mph [≈ Typical cruising speed of a modern jet airliner, e.g. an Airbus A380.] at cruising altitude).

Problem is that special characters such as umlauts trigger the behavior: 1842 W [≈ heat output of a domestic electric kettle]örter 1842 watt != 1842 words

Great app! I just wish there was an option to have the text be added as a tooltip to the number so that it is less obstructive.