2008 September | Nerdlets

Big Leaps with Zotero

Software, Tech/Gadgets, Webapps and Websites 2 Responses »

Sep 302008

I am repeatedly impressed by the work going on at Zotero. The latest feature: online access to your data. That’s right, the data that you have synced with Zotero’s servers can now be accessed anywhere in the world; all you need is a web browser.

And here’s the beauty of it: any browser will do, even portable ones. More particularly, you can view and update your Zotero data from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

This has enormous possibility for pastors and academics. Think of all the times during the day when you have that brainstorm idea for a sermon example or theology paper, and no where to write it down. I have been carrying a tiny (wallet-sized) pen and mini-post-it-notes to make sure no brain bubbles are lost in the course of the day, but now there is no need. Simply access your Zotero database on your iPod Touch, add a little note under your sermon/paper entry (I have a seperate Zotero folder for each paper I write or sermon I preach), and you have an instant and always up-to-date repository of analogies and ideas.

Now if someone would only donate an iPod Touch to Nerdlets, I could write a full review!

Read the details of the newest updates, including a link to get things started, here.

RefTagger Now Supports Movable Type

Software, Webapps and Websites No Responses »

Sep 302008

Previously mentioned RefTagger now supports Movable Type, so if you use that platform, check out Logos’s recent how to.

Google Audio Indexing and the Church

Webapps and Websites No Responses »

Sep 302008

Here is a nice little snippet about Google’s new audio indexing technology from Justin Taylor’s blog, complete with a couple of ideas about how it might be useful for pastors and churches.

Discourse Analysis Software from Logos

Biblical Greek, Books, Software No Responses »

Sep 292008

Good translations require a good understanding of how languages work. This requires more than just knowing a list of words and grammatical structures; it requires an understanding of why an author chooses this structure instead of that one. It requires an understanding of linguistic context, of the rules of discourse, of conventions of speech and genre. The tools and techniques by which exegetes can study these factors is called Discourse Analysis.

For a great introduction to Discourse Analysis, as well as other topics in linguistics and their impact on biblical studies, check out Cotterell’s Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation. Young’s Intermediate New Testament Greek also includes a wonderful introduction to Discourse Analysis, and includes several different methods for diagramming.

But the purpose of this post is to point out some software by Logos. First, there is a semantic/discourse diagramming feature bundled into Scholar’s Library (which looks very nice; Bibleworks includes grammatical diagramming, but not discourse diagrams). Check that out here. Additionally, they are now offering a complete discourse analysis of the New Testament. Check out the announcement, complete with screenshots and a video, here.

Google Takes a Stand

Culture 1 Response »

Sep 262008

Google makes a rare (for Google or any other publicly-owned corporation) stand on a California legislative initiative that does not affect Google’s core business, Proposition 8:

While there are many objections to this proposition — further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text — it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

Read the whole thing.

Another Web-based Bible Application

Biblical Greek, Webapps and Websites 2 Responses »

Sep 262008

Logos software is up with the times. From their blog:

Most of us still use desktop applications when we want to do serious work, but web applications are improving rapidly and fast becoming viable alternatives, at least when it comes to basic functionality. Desktop applications simply can’t compete with the convenience of being able to access your data from any computer connected to the web.

So they have launched the Beta of Bible.Logos.com , which looks pretty fantastic. The fonts are easy to read and the site is well laid out. Searching is similarly simple and responsive. Switching between versions is quick and easy, and there are many versions to choose from, including a variety of Greek texts.

The Greek features are fairly limited in comparison with The Resurgence Greek Project (see my review of that site), and while the interface is easy to use, searching is not yet very advanced. The Greek text is Unicode compliant, which is a good thing.

The big feature is promised integration with the recently released RefTagger, which allows you to automatically create bible-verse popups on your blog.

Logos’s recent contributions to Bible software are encouraging and important; finally a company is working hard to bring biblical research into the modern age. For more information, check out the full post on their blog.

Follow Me on Twitter

Webapps and Websites 3 Responses »

Sep 252008

OK, I’m taking the plunge. Follow me on Twitter, especially if you want to keep up with this blog (and don’t want to subscribe).

If you haven’t heard of Twitter, it’s a “micro-blogging” (or “life-streaming”) service that allows you to post mini-updates about your current state of being. It has a variety of uses–from simply telling your friends where you’re at, to informing the world that you have a new blog post, to reporting news and current events. This flexibility is the result of its simplicity: posts have to be short and sweet, and the more abbreviations (lol, afk, .02, asaygt, awgthtgtta) the better, and you can post from anywhere (email, internet, cell-phone, etc.), and because it’s all so easy people post enormous amounts of material (which is both an advantage and a disadvantage).

Using twitter is easy. You simply create a (free) account, and then update at will (you can use any one of a number of twitter clients to make this easier, and plugins are available for almost every platform imaginable (from email clients to other social platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, and FriendFeed). Once you are set up and “tweeting” you can start following other Twitter-ers, and they start following you. It’s less headache than blogging, less social than Facebook/MySpace, but it lets you keep others easily and instantly informed about what you’re up to on your blog, at your work, and in your life.

To be honest, I resisted Twitter for awhile, especially because of a slew of problems they have had recently. But those problems have recently been fixed, and so I’m taking the plunge. Time will tell if its useful. In the mean time, I need the followers!.

File Conversion Tools You Should Bookmark

Webapps and Websites No Responses »

Sep 252008

“How do I convert format x to format y?” I get that a lot, and I have already posted a couple of ways to turn Word docs into pdfs. Here are a couple of other services that can convert files from one format to another.

From Lifehacker:

Zamzar is a web-based file conversion tool that can convert your video, audio, images, and documents from nearly any format to nearly any format you like. For example, if you’ve never felt that you could quite figure out how to convert that video you took on your cameraphone to a format you can play on your iPod, Zamzar can do it for you.
Convert by email! That’s right, just attach a file to an email and send it to a specific address and your files will be converted and sent back to you quickly and easily. This can also be handy for transferring or backing up files, and it supports a wide range of formats. Read about it here.

An Open-Source Alternative to Apple’s iPhone

Tech/Gadgets No Responses »

Sep 232008

No one can dispute it: the iPhone is cool. But Apple maintains absolute control over the software you can install and the services you can use, so the iPhone is still tethered to your home computer. The problem with the iPhone is that it is not open-source.

Google has been working on an alternative platform for some time now, dubbed Android (for a summary and overview, go here, for more technical details, start here). Its not a phone; its a platform, that is, a collection of tools and software that runs a phone. Think of it as an operating system for your cell, and in this case that operating system is free and open-source (for the most part).

The Android platform has been in development for over a year, and today marks the official announcement of the first phone to utilize that platform: the T-Mobile G1, otherwise known as the HTC Dream, and includes a full slide out keyboard and a touch screen interface. Like the iPhone, it will play music (purchases are through Amazon’s DRM-free music store), support podcasts, and include an application store for community-produced software.

Ars Technica reports:

In addition to being chock full of Google’s open source goodness, the
companies have worked to ensure that the Android-enabled Dream is chock
full of familiar features and apps. Users will have one-click access to
all of Google’s mobile apps, such as Gmail, Google Maps (including
street view, a feature that is infuriatingly missing from the iPhone),
Google talk, Google Calendar, and more.

Check out the full story here.

Update: Read The New York Times’s take, complete with pretty pictures.

Zotero Supports 1100 Bibliographic Styles

Software No Responses »

Sep 232008

From their blog:

As the launch of Zotero 1.5 approaches we are excited to announce the availability of specific bibliographic styles for more than 1100 journals. Zotero now supports such diverse publications as French Historical Studies, the American Sociological Review, Accounts of Chemical Research, the Chinese Journal of Clinical Oncology, the British Medical Journal, American Political Science Review, and Oxford German Studies. We also remind Zotero users that most other publications are already supported through our generic styles.

Many of these styles require the Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview release.

You can find additional styles here. To install the Society of Biblical Literature Style go here.