August 2007 - Posts

• BibleTechnology.com Q&A the how and why.

  There are lots of Bible software products on the market and as we already mentioned we have asked four of the main Bible software companies to answer some questions about what they do and how they do it.   Why did we do this? As general consumers we purchase products frequently without knowing much about the companies we are purchasing from.  However, believers share a common faith, and as such we want to help foster some community from a technical perspective - we think that helping you understand a little about the organizations working to support believers through technology can only be good. So we have three goals to this series of Q&A questions. 1) To open these companies up to you the consumer to help you to understand where these companies came from, what drives them and their target markets 2) To open your eyes to the variety of software products that are available to you 3) To open a discussion and facilitate feedback about some of the limitations of technology today. How are the questions structured? The questions were asked of each software company individually.  None of the answers have been shared, so the comparison that will be done here will be an interesting read for all the companies involved as well as their customers. We have four sets of questions.  The four areas are: 1) Company - where did you come from, what milestones have been important for the companies, what philosophies exist around publishing books and what is the company purpose and mission? 2) Products - what products do you produce, what platforms do you support, who do you target your software at, how do you do user scenario planning/modeling, product planning, how do you price books? 3) Technology - what advantages do you see software having over regular books and paper, what new technology will make the biggest difference in the future, how do you think Bible software will change in ten years time? 4) Getting started - What sets your software apart for the new user, what is the easiest entry level package you sell, book interoperability, how do you handle upgrades for users? These questions will be posted in four posts over the next two weeks, so watch out for them! Posted Aug 30 2007, 03:04 AM by Darryl with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Beginner, Software, Bible, Books, Q&A

• Pocket Bible for Windows - review

  Pocket Bible for Windows is a new product from Laridian.  Laridian have been making Bible software for sometime, however up until now it has always been aimed at the mobile market.  This new version targets the Windows desktop, but has some unique features and some interesting differences to many other Bible software applications on the market today. This review is aimed at beginners - those who are not confident to computers - with the goal of helping you understand whether this product is for you or not. Rather than go through all the features and explain them all in text I thought I might instead build some screen casts of the product so that you can look at how you interact with the application.  These screen casts are in WMV format so you should be able to play them on (almost) any Windows computer. Product Layout Firstly I've done a screen cast that goes through how the product is laid out - particularly how the windows work, and also look at taking notes.  Click the link below and then select either "Open" to play the file or "Save" to save it to your computer to watch later. Low Res (6 mins 17 seconds, 5.5Mb) Hi Res (6 mins 17 seconds, 33.7Mb) To summarize the layout portion of the review, PocketBible for Windows has some good points and some quirks that may take some getting used to for some users (particularly people not confident with computers).  The good points are fast start times placing your mouse over verses will show you a tool tip of the verse without having to change your bible location easy to follow what book you are looking at thanks to the color coded background good segregation of books by type makes it easy to switch between common books (e.g. dictionaries, commentaries, etc) Very rich note taking functionality via HTML The quirks are: Lots of menu items to open books may be confusing to some people Laying out windows is done using a new paradigm HTML codes in notes will be off-putting to those who don't understand HTML Devotional Reading One of the strengths of PocketBible is the devotional side of it.  PocketBible makes it easy to work through a Bible Reading plan, remember where you are up to if you don't manage to do it every day. Again, I've got a screen cast that walks through how the devotional system works.  As before, click the appropriate link and select "Open" or "Save": Low Res (4 mins, 58 seconds, 4.5Mb) Hi Res (4 mins, 58 seconds, 21 Mb) Again, to summarize the good points of devotional reading: Easy to set and open your preferred devotional Mark each day as read - helps you know what days you've missed and need to go back to Very good navigation between days Excellent range of devotionals available Again, the quirks are: Can't build your own reading plan (separate product required) Other notable features Laridian have numerous books available for Pocket Bible, so getting what you want shouldn't be hard.  This includes a huge range of Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, devotionals and other books. Some of the other key strong features of PocketBible for Windows include: Its fast! The ability to launch the application from a USB key Share PocketBible notes with Laridians mobile software Purchase a book once and use it on either Windows or your mobile device Running the application from a USB key is actually quite a nice option.  This option means you dont have to install anything on the computer you are using at all, making starting the application a matter of just plugging in the USB Key and clicking the "run" button.  It also allows you to take your software with you and run it on any computer, and you'll have all your notes and library with you wherever you go.  You can purchase PocketBible for Windows over the internet from Laridians website for $19.99, and have it delivered either via download or on a USB Memory key. Conclusion Overall I think PocketBible for Windows is a strong first version.  The product has some quirks, however it also has some very nice features.  The ability to share your notes and even books with the mobile version of PocketBible is a huge plus (we need more of this in the industry).  The price is excellent, and there is a great range of books and Bibles available to you.  If you want want to put your devotional life on steroids, this could be the product to do it. Posted Aug 29 2007, 12:12 PM by Darryl with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Beginner, Software, Bible, Books, Review

• Do you own a video iPod or Sony PSP?

  Then did you know you can use it to further your Christian training and apologetics? Try this link for example: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594299941... You can download the video for free and put it on your portable device. Technology is something that we should be using to extend God's Kingdom. The spiritual battle we are engaged in requires some tools, and technology is helping to provide them! Posted Aug 27 2007, 01:53 PM by robocop with no comments Filed under: iPod, Apologetics

• iPods and Windows Media Player

  And you thought that they didn't play together? Seems like someone has figured out how to make them talk and you just have to hand over the cash ($14.95) for a done deal. So, have I tried it? Not yet. Have you? Then tell us what you think. Oh, and here is the link. Posted Aug 27 2007, 02:47 AM by robocop with no comments Filed under: MP3 players, iPod

• Q&A with Bible Software companies - the list

  This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of Bible software products or vendors, but nonetheless, here is a quick list of Bible Applications that have been asked to respond to our BIble Software Q&A and are well worth checking out. These organizations are ordered based on the devices they support - i.e. mobile only, mobile and desktop, desktop only. Olive Tree Olive Tree produce Bible Software for Windows Mobile and PalmSource devices and is quite popular.  They have a range of books in their library at reasonable prices and allow you to build your own collections.  They also support multiple languages. e-Sword e-Sword has both desktop and Windows Mobile versions.  Their software is free, as are many of the books and bibles including a few very good modern translations such as the ESV.  They also have some good historical translations such as the Bishops Bible (1568) and a number of foreign languages. Laridian Laridian produce a range of products for a range of devices including Windows Mobile, PalmOS, Blackberry, iPod and Windows.  Supporting so many devices is hard, so this is a big effort - but the benefit is that the books in their library are transferable between many of these devices. They also have tracts and a range of books, with a few free books. Logos Logos supports Windows Desktop only, but has a monstrous library with more books being added regularly.  They also have some unique tools and books such as the reverse interlinear which has the Greek and English alongside each other in the English ordering. Which of these is right for you?  Good question.  More on this soon... If you have some software you use that is not listed here, please leave a comment :-) I'd love to add them in to the next exercise like this that we do. Posted Aug 24 2007, 04:43 PM by Darryl with no comments Filed under: Beginner, Software, Books, Q&A

• PocketBible for Windows Released

  Yesterday the team at Laridian released PocketBible for Windows. I'm going to have a review up in the next couple of days but there are a couple of things worth pointing out about this product: Firstly it is very competitively priced for a desktop product - US$19.99.  If you compare it to most of the other desktop Bible Software products, this is hundreds of dollars cheaper in some cases. Secondly, if you already have Pocket Bible for your Windows Mobile or Palm device, you already have a library of books for it - the books are shared between all the Laridian products. Laridian have some starter libraries available now such as the PocketBible NIV Reference Bundle which includes a bunch of Bibles, dictionaries, commentaries, devotionals and more for $99 - which is around 50% off the normal price. Watch out for the review in the next couple of days. Posted Aug 23 2007, 11:13 AM by Darryl with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Software, News, Books

• More on RSS and in video...

  Following up from my post the other day, I just found a post on the Logos blog that comes with a video that has a good explanation of RSS and how it works. If you are new to RSS, this gives you a pretty good run down in laymans language. Watch it out here. Posted Aug 19 2007, 06:32 AM by Darryl with no comments Filed under: Beginner, Internet, RSS

• Training Christians

  One of my passions is to up-skill Christians. I see it as essential that we not only out-love and out-die our enemies, but the we also out-think them. Well, many people agree with me, which is somewhat comforting (although not a test for truth!) and one example is shown below. These guys have superb goals and this email I recently received is very very exciting as we progress into the 21st century. Have a read:   Dear Rob, We have just added a new leadership level course on Buddhism from Dr. Timothy Tennent. There are a few lectures we are missing, but we will recorded them the next time he lectures. We also posted our financial number for the year 2006 and our numbers for January through July, 2007. We trust you will see we are using your giving wisely. As far as the future is concerned, we are on track to finish the core curriculum for the Foundations courses by December. These ten to eleven classes will also be used in our mp3sforJesus program. We have joined forces with New Directions, a missions organization that has been serving in the two-thirds world for 35 years, to distribute the classes. Their goal is 1,000 units in 2008. It is exciting to think that BT materials will eventually train thousands of lay church leaders in the bush areas of the two-thirds world. We solicit your prayers and ongoing support so we can finish this project. Thank you, Your friends at BiblicalTraining (You have been included in this email because you granted BiblicalTraining the privilege of contacting you periodically. If you would prefer that we do not write, then please change the preferences in your account on www.BiblicalTraining.org. This email is coming from an unattended mailbox. If you want to respond, please use the contact form on the website. Thank you.) Posted Aug 18 2007, 05:36 PM by robocop with no comments Filed under: News, lecture, sermon, MP3 players, iPod, Apologetics

• Music

  Palmerston North is the center of the universe, right? Oh, ok. Actually, Live Writer spelling dictionary does not even have the word palmerston in it :-( Check this guy's music out. www.palmerstoncross.com Just open the webpage to hear a demo song. Posted Aug 18 2007, 05:04 PM by robocop with no comments Filed under: Beginner

• Good things can come - effortlessly

  Have you got a favorite web site?  One you visit every time you get onto the Internet?  Perhaps you have several or lots.  There are probably lots of web sites that you've seen that were good, but you just can't go and visit them all - it would take too long.  What if all the latest information on those web sites could come to you and you could skim through them to find the interesting bits and leave the rest?  You can - and I'm going to show you how. I'm talking  of a technology called RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication).  RSS is a technology that is designed to allow software to "harvest" web pages and deliver them to you to read when you are ready. How does this work?  Its pretty simple really.  It really just involves some special software (readily available for no cost) that can contact those web sites for you, retrieve the new content on that site and store it on your computer for you to view when you are ready. How do you know what pages have this ability?  That too should be pretty easy.  One of the most obvious is that you can look for or  on the site.  Another way is to look for the words "RSS", "XML", "RDF", "Atom" or "Feed" on the page - these all mean much the same thing for the sake of this discussion.  Another way is to look at the top of your web browser - as most modern web browsers support RSS and can alert you to its presence. When you do find these tell-tale signs you can click the icon or text and you will see a page similar to the following: This is the RSS Feed - again, it doesn't look hard to read, but that is  because the browser has dressed it up for you.  The information on this page can be put into a RSS Reader (that special software I was talking about before) and then the RSS Reader will retrieve it periodically for you to read at  your own leisure. In the next few days I will explore two RSS Readers - one you didn't know you had and one that you can download for free that really make reading web sites a breeze. Posted Aug 17 2007, 02:32 PM by Darryl with no comments Filed under: Beginner, Internet, RSS

• Useful worship resource - worshiptogether.com

  Let me quickly tell you about my favourite worship resource. Everyone I show this site to likes it, and starts to use it to find songs for their church. It's worshiptogether.com. This site has so much going for it. Every week you can download the sheet music for a few new songs - and this is in Scorch format, so you can transpose them to suit, print out as many copies as you need (governed by your CCLI licence), and play them back in a MIDI-style. All within your browser with the free Scorch plugin from Sibelius. You can also listen to the new songs (which incidentally, aren't from backyard artists, these are people like Tim Hughes, Chris Tomlin, Mac Powell, Matt Redman, etc), so that you can get a feel for the song. But there's more (I feel like I'm selling steak-knives). Every week they interview the writer of one of their new songs, and stream out a video of this. So this week you can watch an interview with Chris Tomlin talking about his song "Let God Arise". I haven't watched it yet myself, but I imagine he's going to talk about where he was with God when he wrote the song, what it means to him, and why he chose particular lyrics. He'll play through it, and then the interviewer (who I'm guessing will be Matt Maher or Brenton Brown - both well known songwriters too) will ask about particular chord shapes and strumming styles. Watching this is the kind of thing really helps you get a feel for a song, and while this shouldn't influence your decision to introduce it to your church, it's great to hear the writer talk about what God was saying to them when they wrote it. And as well as all that, the site has forums, bible studies, features, and a shop where you can buy albums, sheet music, books, just about whatever you want as a worship leader. As a member of technical communities (I run the Adelaide SQL Server User Group), I understand the value of community. Church gives you that, but often Christians take the community aspect of church for granted, because apart from a common Father, they may not have all that much in common with the members of their church. I'm not suggesting that this isn't the most important thing to have in common with someone else, but even within churches, you see people with common interests gathering - musicians, techies, sport fans, fitness junkies... You may find that the community of people at worshiptogether.com could be just what you want, to discuss the songs that are working in your church, and to keep inspired. But the question of community is another post, for another day... Posted Aug 16 2007, 09:56 AM by Rob Farley with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Beginner, Internet, worship

• Useful worship resource - internet radio

  When you're trying to find good songs for church, the internet is incredibly useful. I've already written that in a previous post. But generally when you're using the internet to find songs, you already know the song from hearing it on a CD or something, and you're just trying to find a copy of the lyrics, or the chords, something like that. But still this requires buying a lot of CDs. And I know as well as the next worship leader that even the best albums have only a couple of good candidates for teaching in church. (Although it has to be said that I remember an album called All Around The World which seemed to have an unending supply of songs - hard to believe you can buy it for £2 now). Hearing the songs is obviously a major part of choosing the songs to teach. It's not just about lyrics, it's about hearing songs and letting God speak to you about whether the song will suit or not. You can spend a long time in Christian music stores (or if you're in the US, in the Christian music section of your local music store), or you can listen to the radio. But not everywhere has a good Christian radio - particularly not one that plays new praise and worship music. On the internet though, there are plenty of radio stations to choose from. My personal favourite is Praise 106.5 (at praise1065.com), a station based in Washington state, near the Canadian border. They have a list of songs they have just played, which makes it easy to find out what that song was. But as well as this, you can help influence the music they play by filling out occasional surveys. I've found many songs by listening to this station, and I find it's a tremendous resource. There are many others as well, including SHOUTcast stations, which are tailored even more to particular tastes. Even if your internet connection isn't very fast, consider listening to internet radio instead of your local one. You may just find that by altering the stations you listen you, the song that your church has been crying out for may just be there. Posted Aug 14 2007, 07:58 PM by Rob Farley with no comments Filed under: Beginner, worship

• Another use for Bible Software - advertising your faith

  This week I was really pleased to have some Bible software on my PocketPC, and also really pleased to have a PocketPC which is more than two years old. Occasionally I find that I need to restart my PocketPC to allow the Bible software to run (Laridian, which I think is a great application). It's frustrating, but it's just a side-effect of having quite an old machine. I was talking mobiles with another MVP at TechEd Australia (the one that Darryl wasn't organising), and saying how I liked the screen-size of mine, but that the memory was a pain. So whilst it seemed suited for reading, it was frustrating because of the restart thing. His reply wasn't the one I expected (although I should've suspected) - "What bible software do you use?" I remember many years ago, when I was still in high-school, hearing a sermon about 'secret-agent Christians'. It was all about those people that are reluctant to admit that they're Christians, or at least don't advertise the fact to their colleagues. I hope I never fall into that bracket. I know Darryl doesn't - he wrote last week about the fact that we met this way. I don't go around telling everyone I'm a Christian, but I'm happy to drop clues into conversations. Mentioning church now and then, or my Bible software, things like that. Darryl and I have a friend in the technical community who puts 'Dr' in front of his name. He's a nice guy, and has found that it's a way of differentiating himself from the other people around the place who have the same name. I think it's fair enough that he does this, although I'm sure some people consider it strange. I wouldn't do it for a doctorate, but if I ever get pastor-ised, I will happily call myself "Pastor Rob" everywhere. I'm sure many would consider me a fruitcake, but I would also find lots of secret-agent Christians coming up to me and saying "Hey, I'm a Christian too...". I already know of several Christians in the SQL user-group I run, and that's not only encouraging to me, but gives me the chance to talk about God with other tech people. Most of all, if I were known as Pastor Rob, then I'd get people coming to me for counselling, relationship advice, and even salvation help. I've always had this from colleagues, but I would love to have people come to me from the wider technical community. Oh, and the MVP I came across was Melbourne-based Ben Walters. I'm sure he won't mind me mentioning that here. Posted Aug 11 2007, 06:25 PM by Rob Farley with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Beginner

• Q&A with Bible Software companies

  When you look for Bible Software, what do you look for?  Many people choose software based on what people they know have said about it.  Few choose by examination, and even fewer are able to choose based on in depth knowledge. It can be sometimes be quite hard to make a decision about Bible Software without knowing a little more about the organization behind the software.  So we've contacted the top people at the top Bible software organizations and we've asked them a bit about their organizations and their products.  We've given four organizations the same set of questions to answer.  The questions are divided into four sections which we will examine in turn.  The idea behind this is to help you, the consumer make an informed decision about which bible software is suited to you. The categories for the questions were: Products Getting Started Technology Company In the next few days we'll start putting up the responses from the organizations.  As far as I know this is the first time this sort of thing has been done, so it should be quite interesting and revealing.  Stay tuned for more. Posted Aug 08 2007, 02:27 AM by Darryl with no comments Filed under: Beginner, Software, Bible, Q&A

• Laridian PocketBible for Windows coming

  Craig has posted today that Laridian are going to be releasing a version of their PocketBible software for Windows desktops. PocketBible for Windows will allow you to sync your notes between PocketBible for PocketPC and PocketBible for Windows.  This is a great feature and as I understand it, this is the first Bible Software to enable this functionality. The benefit of this is that you'll be out at church with your Windows Mobile device and you'll be able to take notes and then sync your notes onto your computer when you get home and continue to work on them there. Or if you are doing your devotion on your computer and take notes, you can sync them to your mobile device and have them where ever you go. It also looks like it will sync with their upcoming iPhone software too. The other unique thing about Laridian is that they license the books you buy for any platform, so you'll be able to buy the book once and use it on any of your devices (iPhone, Windows Mobile, Palm or Windows desktop). I'm testing the Beta of PocketBible for Windows, so I'll be sure to put up a review when its time. Read more about this upcoming release on the Laridian Blog. Posted Aug 03 2007, 10:54 PM by Darryl with no comments Filed under: Intermediate, Software, Mobile, News