SmokeyBox is a little application that I created to take the place of the now-defunct Google Deskbar.
What does it do? It is a search utility that hides in the background until you summon it by hitting CTRL, then SHIFT, then CTRL, then SHIFT. It will popup wherever your mouse pointer is, and it will be ready to perform a variety of tasks for you such as look up a word on Dictionary.com, search on Google or Wikipedia or shorten a lengthy URL using TinyUrl.com.
If you choose to perform a search or a lookup, the results will appear in a small web browser window that pops up and then disappears when you are done with it. There's no need to open a new browser pane or switch away from whatever program you are already using. When you no longer need SmokeyBox, just hit the Esc key or CTRL, SHIFT, CTRL, SHIFT to unsummon it.
If SmokeyBox doesn't do exactly what you would like it to do now, don't despair. It is designed to be extensible, and in the very immediate future, I will be releasing an SDK that will enable developers to added new capabilities to it.
This is Windows-only software, and it requires that Microsoft's .NET Framework 2.0 be installed.
I would love to hear feedback about SmokeyBox.