I met with a friend from Babylon yesterday. Babylon makes software that observes any term on your screen and enables you to see glossary entries for it. The software tries to be as unobtrusive as possible, so that you can get your information and then get back to work. It's primary use has been in translation (English - Hebrew, Russian - English, and a dozen others). It has some useful features, like helping with verb tenses and even pasting the term back into you editor. They also have dictionaries that give you term definitions, either as a typical dictionary or weather terms, finance terms, etc.
However, the cool thing is that translation or dictionary are just two forms of glossary in Babylon. If you have a fixed set of terms, you can create a glossary for Babylon it: postal codes, area codes, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. Their user community has created hundreds of their own glossaries and make them available for sharing with other users. Some examples: a DJ Glossary of terms; Real estate terminology; an RGB glossary that works on both the name and the hexadecimal code and gives you correct HTML for creating the color on a website; a bioglossary with embedded reference material.
Even though it a desktop tool, it is interesting for corporate environments. Obviously, it can provide quick definitions for common terms and abbreviations used within the company. Expand the idea of a glossary to anything that might reside in a database. Babylon can be set up as a simpler entry way into corporate repositories. Get an email that references one of your products, click to get the Babylon definition, and then click again to jump into your ERP system for detailed accounting around that product. Write a memo about a new drug product, click to Babylon to find all the current codes and preferred term, click again to dive into your document management system with this product as a keyword search.
This could be another tool in the collection of items that make life easier for the knowledge worker. As always, there is a 30-day demo. I may be exploring this myself shortly. [Disclosure: I might add this to my suite of options for clients, but my main reason for posting is that the concept seems interesting.]