Monday, November 7, 2005
The World in Your Pocket – Lexipedia 1.1 for Pocket PC
Posted by Don Tolson in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:00 AM
Customizing the Display
Lexipedia also provides limited options for customization of the display.
Figure 6: Options available for customizing Lexipedia’s display, available from the Tools menu.
As shown on the screen shot above, the size of the display text can be altered through three pre-determined sizes and the user can select whether to use Microsoft’s Clear Type technology or not.
Figure 7: An example of the largest typeface available.
There are also four options for Display Styles.
Figure 8: Selecting a display style in Lexipedia.
Options A&C provide white text on a black background, while options B&D provide the reverse. To be honest, I couldn’t see any difference between A&C or B&D.
Figure 9: Lexipedia’s Style A (or C).
Figure 10: Style D (or B).
Upgrades/Updates
The support pages at Revolutionary Software Front unfortunately focus on Lexionary, one of their other products. While some of the general material (downloading, installation) relates to Lexionary, there is no specific information provided on problems installing or running Lexipedia. There is also no mention of upgrade or update policies or procedures for getting the latest version of the articles. (Update -- in an email from RSF, the original plan was to provide quarterly updates to the content, but apparently Wikipedia changed the format of their extracts. They hope to have the first of the quarterly updates available soon.)
Conclusions
As a snapshot of the current combined expertise of the Internet community, Lexipedia provides a very workable and concise package. The applicaton is big, but not unwieldy, and the search capabilities are complete and fast. As with any Internet content, you have to be careful about the source but the Wikipedia Foundation is quickly establishing a reputation for consistency and accuracy at least as good as any of the major encyclopedia vendors.
Don is an Associate Director of Project Management and System Development with Fujitsu Consulting. When not catching up on ‘Goth Invasions of the 5th Century’, he’s often helping out with 6th and 4th grade Science and Social Studies projects. :-)
