Coralidea.com is all about being the portal to all of your coral information needs. A good foundation of knowledge is needed to make sense of the wealth of information available these days. Coralidea.com wants to be the resource of choice for aquarists, researchers and anyone who is interested about learning more about this fascinating and important group of animals.

The short answer is that most of the website's functionality will be available by mid-September. The long answer is that in the pursuit of perfection, something can never truly be completed.

The mobile guide for iPods will be available by mid-september. Although we will try to produce an e-book (pdf) version of the guide in time for our mid-September launch, this is unlikely and the e-book will be made available as soon as possible after launch. However, the iPod version of the mobile guide will be viewable on smartphones and computers.

The cost of the mobile guides is free. All that we humbly ask is that you support the sponsors who support us.

Coralidea's mobile guides use standard image and document file formats which are nimble and interoperable by design. There is no cumbersome digital rights management and the license accompanying our products grant users full liberty to modify the content for personal use and non-commercial re-distribution. A specific list of tested devices will be made available nearing launch date.

Although browsers claim to speak the same web programming language, the truth is that they speak different dialects of the same language.

That is the best question yet! Since the common names of corals can vary so much within a country and even more so in different languages, Latin names are the only universal way of identifying a coral with any real certainty. Also, since all scientific research refers to corals by their Latin name, anyone wishing to learn more about a properly identified coral can do so using the coral's Latin name.

The current growing Coralidea mobile guide is approaching 15MB and it should remain under 20MB by the time it is released. A file this size should download within 1-2 minutes on most modern internet connections.

Although we tried to follow taxonomical guidelines to define these chapters, we also used some discretion in giving some priority to more common and/or popular groups of corals. Some people may not agree with what defines a large or a small polyp stony coral, but at the moment we feel that this is the most elegant way to navigate all coral species.

The first iteration of the mobile Coralidea guide is not much more than a grouping of images. This format is the only way to implement this type of media on iPods although it is also viewable on any electronic device which can display images. Future versions of the mobile Coralidea guide will be in .pdf and .html formats which allow for more integration of text and dynamic display of information, including web functionality.

What, you mean you don't read Latin? In all seriousness the text is there as a placeholder while the website and mobile guides are being developed.