Future of this and other online glossaries

As of now, April 17, 1999, I still have hardly advertised. This site gets around ten hits a day, from all over the world. Literally dozens of countries. It's a blast, and I expect the number of users to increase as time passes, word gets out, and the site improves.

I hope to coauthor with others other glossaries and improvements to the software that supports them. If you would like to make such a glossary, (hosted on my site or yours, whatever) please me an email. Let's talk!

Also I think there is value to putting some version of this (and other) glossaries in book form. I'd use it more that way, and it is thinkable to make a standard series of books from which profits would ensue. (For now econterms.com receives no revenue.)

Those books and the site too would be more valuable if the terms were not edited by a student like me, but rather were approved by experts in the field. So in the long run there should be sub-editors in each field who verify and approve any additions or edits to terms in their field. Software could support that project by making the database editable from many remote locations, and making the approval process electronic. In principle I can see how to do this, and the benefits could accrue to all glossaries while the costs would be split among them.

Also I'd like to see glossaries made accessible in the tiny computers called personal digital assistants, so that one might quickly find something without going to the Net at all. This won't be that hard, if there is some good reason to tackle it, and could possibly bring in revenues. On the other hand, some new Palm computers will be able reach the Web directly (or some subset of it) through a cellular-type phone call. If that technology becomes widespread it will be less important to make a portable version of the glossary itself.

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