Archive for February, 2009

Coincidentally not only one, but 2 WordPress plugins were released today.

First, we have an official WordPress Plugin: Factolex Glossary

The plugin allows you to quickly add a glossary to your post or page, using facts from Factolex. Using it is very simple:

1. First, you write your post (or open up an already written post),
2. then you click the button “Check for terms”.
3. We then look in the Factolex database and offer you to choose which of the terms you want to include in your glossary.
4. So finally, you click the respective terms and select the meaning to be used. The term is then displayed in the sidebar box

By default a definition includes the term and its top fact. If you want to customize this, you can enter your Factolex username in the plugin settings

Download the Factolex Glossary plugin at the WordPress.org Plugin Repository. We have also set up a page that includes larger screenshots.

Also watch a screen cast here:

I have attached a glossary to this post, see below.

Secondly, Sebastian Moser (who also wrote the Factolex Greasemonkey Script) has been using his Factolex WordPress Plugin for quite a while on his blog already:

Today he has published it in the WordPress.org Plugin Repository. Check it out: Factolex WordPress plugin.

There is an open source alternative to Google Maps, called OpenStreetMap where everyone can help updating the map data. The project has gone a long way and already provides pretty solid data. It makes sense to give control to the users over the data. Everyone knows his neighborhood better than some place in another country. And third parties who provide data for Google Maps just don’t live in everyone’s neighborhood.

So it’s like OpenStreetMap is a perfect fit to Factolex. But the interface of Google Maps is pretty much unrivaled in my opinion. So we simply decided to combine the best of both worlds, as it is described in an article in the OpenStreetMap Wiki.

Take the not-so-well known small city of Cham in Germany, and let’s compare Google Maps to OpenStreetMap:

vs.

The procedure looks like this:

1. Go to http://twitter.com/factolex and follow the user factolex. This is so that we can reply to you via direct message.
2. Send a term by sending a Twitter message like @factolex Term
3. As quickly as possible, you will receive a direct message as reply.

During the process we will follow your Twitter user, so that from the first message on, you can ask Factolex via direct message as well: d factolex Term

In your user settings you can claim a Twitter user to your account, and also change a few settings:

You can configure Factolex in a way so that all terms that your search through Twitter will be saved to your lexicon, so that you can find it later when you’re back to your computer.

Give it a try! We use it internally a lot, in many situations this is the quickest way to ask Factolex for an explanation.

For low bandwidth situations, when you want to query Factolex as quickly as possible, we have created a new way to query it. Just enter this address:

i.factolex.com

This will pull up a page that instantly gives you the ability to enter a term:

Click on “OK” and the respective Factolex page will load.