For Farlex, Inc., 2006 was an eventful year. The privately-held
company, based in Huntingdon Valley, PA, publishes the hugely popular
reference site, www.TheFreeDictionary.com,
which offers access to a host of valuable reference materials including
a legal dictionary and computing dictionary, as well as the Columbia,
Wikipedia, and Hutchinson Encyclopedias.
Farlex marked the start of '06 with the ambitious launch of
TheFreeDictionary's personal homepage, a user-friendly interface that
has attracted a loyal following. The free, fully customizable format
can be accessed from any modern browser and does not require any
installation, download, or additional software. It has been lauded for
its clarity, organization and versatility--users can simply add,
remove, drag, and drop content windows containing features that are
updated daily, including a horoscope, numerous vocabulary games, a
weather report, and a stock market tracker.
In March of 2006, Farlex partnered with Whitepages.com to launch a new
address lookup feature that provides users quick access to
WhitePages.com's up-to-date address, phone, and map information. The
button joined TheFreeDictionary's other internet search options,
including EBay, Amazon, Google, and Yahoo! Later in the year, Farlex
added Yellow Pages content from SuperPages.com.
By December, TheFreeDictionary.com had welcomed its 450,000,000th
visitor, and Farlex had supplemented the site's homepage offerings with
an innovative new mail feature that gives users direct and instant
access to their email inboxes, a picture option that allows users to
upload their favorite photos for display directly on their homepage,
and an expanded syndicated news directory that offers hundreds of RSS
feeds from dozens of reputable publications, websites, and news
sources.
As they celebrate 2006's undeniable achievements, Farlex's co-founders,
Nick Simonov and Steve Boymel, are focused on the future. Simonov
attributes the company's success to this kind of emphasis on constant
innovation, as well as attentiveness to user feedback. "The way that
TheFreeDictionary had taken shape is a reflection of the needs of its
audience. We launch features in response to user requests, and our
growth, especially over the course of the past year, is directly
attributable to the fact that we are receptive and flexible," he says.
In keeping with this philosophy, Simonov and Boymel are ushering in the
new year with the re-launch of TheFreeDictionary's sister site, www.TheFreeLibrary.com,
which thus far offered full-text versions of classic literary works by
hundreds of celebrated authors. Farlex is expanding the site to include
a massive collection of periodicals--over 2 million articles dating
back to 1984. Newly-published articles will be added to the site daily
from about 200 leading publications covering Business and Industry,
Communications, Entertainment, Health, Humanities, Law, Government,
Politics, Recreation and Leisure, Science and Technology, and Social
Sciences.
Until now, TheFreeLibrary complemented TheFreeDictionary in a somewhat
limited manner. When a user searched for a word's definition on
TheFreeDictionary, the definition page would include helpful usage
examples in the form of "references in classic literature," taken from
TheFreeLibrary's collection. Now, says Boymel, the two sites will be
more fully integrated, as TheFreeLibrary becomes its own periodical
reference library. "We expect to see a lot more traffic between the two
sites, as TheFreeLibrary becomes a larger source of information that
will supplement TheFreeDictionary's already enormous collection. Anyone
looking for information on a certain topic can now take advantage of
TheFreeLibrary's periodicals as well as TheFreeDictionary's
encyclopedias."
About TheFreeDictionary.com:
Launched in the spring of 2003, TheFreeDictionary.com has quickly
become one of the most comprehensive reference resources on the Web.
From its beginnings as a simple dictionary of everyday terms,
TheFreeDictionary.com has grown to include medical, legal, and computer
dictionaries, a thesaurus, several encyclopedias, a literature
reference library, and a search engine. A prime online vehicle for
active information seekers, TheFreeDictionary.com has been accessed by
more than 450 million visitors.
About TheFreeLibrary.com:
Launched in the spring of 2003, TheFreeLibrary.com provides immediate
access to some of the world's greatest works of classic literature,
while simultaneously serving as an excellent resource for building
vocabulary and learning English as a second language. Simply
double-click any word in the text to obtain an instant dictionary
definition. TheFreeLibrary contains over 400 great books, more than
10,000 pages of classic literature, information on over a hundred of
the world's most famous authors, and reference information and
quotations. As of January 2007, TheFreeLibrary has been expanded to
include up to date articles from about 200 periodicals and magazines
dating from 1984. New articles are added to the site every day from
about 200 leading publications covering Business and Industry,
Communications, Entertainment, Health, Humanities, Law, Government,
Politics, Recreation and Leisure, Science and Technology, and Social
Sciences.
About Farlex, Inc.:
Farlex, Inc. (www.farlex.com)
is an independent, privately held provider of online reference products
based in Huntingdon Valley, PA. Founded in 2004, Farlex, Inc. provides
innovative, easy-to-use reference and learning tools. Farlex's flagship
websites, TheFreeDictionary.com and TheFreeLibrary.com, contain over
five million pages of books, periodicals, and reference information
from the world's most respected sources.