Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Among the most difficult decisions we have been facing is the part about user contribution and how this should be linked to user registration.

Most of you probably know that on the big Wikipedia, they don’t force people to register to have them contribute something. This takes away a barrier for people just wanting to change something right away. The other barriers like complicated wiki syntax remain, of course.

One reason that this is possible at Wikipedia, is that if someone vandalizes a page, the next user can revert that change easily and just by himself.

Things are a little different at Factolex. As we rely on people deciding how good or bad a fact is, offending material or spam will take its time until it disappears. For this reason we decided to introduce a registration barrier but tried to ease it at several points.

The common approach: Make people register before you let them edit something

This is also the easiest to code, and most sites do it like that. The problem is that as a new user I have to give my data upfront without knowing if I like how the site does it or not.

It’s a huge amount of trust that your (unknown and not (yet) trustworthy) site asks from the user. So that’s not the way we wanted to go.

Let people enter what they intend to enter and make them register afterwards

First, let the user enter what they were just about to add. This way you don’t distract him in his creative phase.

Only then take him to the register screen.

Note at the bottom of the screenshot: We present the term that had just been entered by the user to prove that we still have it.

As mentioned earlier, this is indeed more difficult to code. It not only takes more time but also makes the code more complex, but I think it’s worth the trouble. But in fact this doesn’t go far enough for me.

Don’t really force the user to register

Now this is what I like on the web! I actually don’t want to register until I am sure that the service is useful to me. And this is also the approach we take. After you have entered a term, you will see it like this:

The grey stripes indicate that the data is not public. This way the user can use the site completely unregistered, seeing all the features in action, before he decides to register.

Even if the user does not decide to register, we reserve the right to have other users publish what has been entered by unregistered users. That way knowledge entered is never lost.

Sebastian Moser has created a cool Greasemonkey script that simultaneously searches Factolex when searching on Google. It used the somewhat unfinished Factolex API. You can see how it works on the screenshot below.

Checkout the script if you have Firefox (unfortunately does not work on Greasekit on Safari, because all GM_* functionality have been disabled there). Thanks, Sebastian!

It has been quite some time since we have posted about the ongoings at Factolex.

This was mostly due to the fact that Factolex had been just a side project besides my work at Netvibes. Also Nader is very busy at his relatively new company Compuccino.

But for me, things have been changing lately. I have left my job at Netvibes and now I will be focussing on the further development of Factolex. You can expect great things and I will write a small series of blog entries showing what progress has been done lately.

I always loved tags but now it really became apparent how useful they are. Especially in a knowledge environment like Factolex. Let’s say you wanted to display a list of:

• Cities like San Francisco, London, …
• Companies like Apple, Coca-Cola, …
• TV Series like Family Guy, Prison Break, …
• Bloggers like Michael Arrington, Om Malik, …
• Quotes by people like Abraham Lincoln, Steve Jobs, …
• Nationalities from people like Eminem, Mark Twain, …
• …

The possibilities are endless!

Late at night we reached over 200 terms and 1000 facts! :)

A couple of new terms we find interesting, have been posted by Ewald. He studies Linguistics at the University of Vienna he told us.

Thanks to the great help from Chrissy and Matteo, we have reached our first milestone: over 100 terms and 600 facts. In the mean time Alex is fine-tuning the scripts and adding a couple of improvements to the way terms are added. It is now even easier to use and faster. I love JavaScript! :)

factolex is working on the iPod Touch and iPhone by design. With an em-based stylesheet and a small additional CSS-file for mobile devices, it’s pretty easy to get it working.

Got an iDevice? Surf to factolex.com and enjoy the knowledge :-)

How to make your website work on a mobile device

1. Use an EM-based stylesheet (not pixels)
2. Insert this meta definition in your header
   <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
3. Create a routine to check for the browser.
   For example, in PHP you can gather valuable information by reading $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']
4. If browser agent is iphone or other, insert a custom stylesheet that tells the browser to hide or rearrange divs. In our case moving the sidebar to the bottom, floating the login area to the right of the logo, etc.

Welcome to the first entry in our factolex blog: a place where we write about the new (ad)venture Alex and I (Nader) are up to.

Some months ago, Alex had the idea of a website where information is presented in a short and concise way, and, unlike existing services, it should be facts only which people can collectively enhance and extend. Not hundred lines of text to catch the important bits. He presented the idea to me and since I know how much fun it is to work together with him, I agreed to help on the design and whatever else is needed (except programming).

Stay tuned for upcoming news about the progress we make on factolex.com and additional information around terms, facts and knowledge.

Should you have any questions about the project, terms or other, feel free to post a comment in the blog or send us an e-mail.