Just like a real lexicon or any other serious book, Factolex now has its own index of terms. This is useful when you don’t know exactly how a word is spelled or if you just want to browse around.

Check it out at http://www.factolex.com/index/

Helpful Hint
You can also type http://www.factolex.com/index/Ge to get a list of words starting with “Ge”

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! :)

Want to see how terms, facts and tags evolved over time?
Click the link in the footer called Stats

Fresh out of the factolex kitchen: your personalized lexicon.

By selecting facts of terms you find relevant, factolex automatically creates your personal lexicon. This is very useful when you are doing research on a topic or just want to have a list of terms you read up on most.

Access your lexicon by clicking on the link in the header area:

Other people’s lexicon
You can also view lexica compiled by other people, for example nader’s lexicon

How it looks like

Alex finished a cool new feature: the integration of google maps on term pages with the tag “city”. This is very useful when you don’t know where a city is located. Where London is should be clear to everybody I guess :-)

How it looks like on the term page for London

The integration works automatically. You just need to click “Add a fact”, insert coordinates and the tag “coordinates”. Done.

How to enter coordinates

A friend of mine was telling me about procrastination the other day so I researched on the topic and found this hilarious video shown below.

Procrastination
type of avoidance behaviour characterised by postponing actions to a later time

Update:
Procrastination Flowchart

© http://projectsidewalk.com/flowchart/

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.

After various versions and try-outs we have come to the final logo you can see below. We wanted a logo that is modern and readable at the same time, and, not too Web 2.0 style (Bye Arial Rounded).

Logo

Slogan
short and concise explanations

Other slogans we thought about:

• Short and pithy
• Short and precise explanations
• Get the facts in an instant

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.