2008 November | Nerdlets

New Feature at Nerdlets: Better Comments, Better Conversations

About, Webapps and Websites 6 Responses »

Nov 262008

Your Nerdlets are now conversationally super-powered. Comments are now threaded (you can reply to other people’s comments), easier to manage, easier to subscribe to, and better all around.

This is a long post, so let me give you the bottom line: Nerdlets.org values your comments, and hopes that you will participate in the ongoing discussion that happens here. I want to know how you are using computing technology, particularly if you are using it for the direct benifit of Christ’s kingdom. The new commenting system is designed to facilitate community involvement. It also allows you to promote yourself and your own ideas: the more you participate in the discussion here the more you can draw positive attention to yourself, and to your blog, website, or social service. Read on to find out how!

Blogging is Supposed to be Social

Blogging is supposed to be a social medium. For a variety of reasons, the social aspect of blogging has dwindled in the last couple of years. Partly this is because of limitations in most blogging software, and these limitations are gradually being fixed (WordPress 2.7, for example, will feature basic threading of comments). Another factor is the rise of more directly social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.

Personally I think we can restore community to the Blog, and to that end I have installed IntenseDebate. Recently acquired by the folks at WordPress, IntenseDebate brings a variety of social features to any Blog.

Features of IntenseDebate

You will notice that the basic commenting interface is still simple to use and intuitive, and anybody can post regardless of whether or not you have an account with Nerdlets or IntenseDebate

Yet there are some interesting new features available to those willing to create an account with IntenseDebate (which is very easy to do: just click the box says create an accound).

Reply to comments. You can now reply to someone else’s comment, or start a fresh thread. This essentially turns each Blog Post into a forum. No more “@username’ syntax. Because comments are now hierarchical they are now more conversational.
Subscribe to comments. You can now easily subscribe to the comments for a particular post.
Email Notification. If you post a comment and someone replies to your comment you can choose to be notified by email.
Rate comments. Nerdlets is now a community. Anyone can rate the helpfulness of other people’s comments. The higher your rank the more prestigious you are, and the more prestigious you are the more people will trust what you have to say. This can help drive traffic to your own blog (I always notice a spike on Nerdlets after I post a comment on someone else’s blog) and increase your reputation in the online world.
Comment across blogs. You can use your IntenseDebate account with any blog that has IntenseDebate installed. Your comments are recorded by IntenseDebate, and your rank is retained throughout, again promoting new conversations and helping you to increase your online reputation.
OpenID. If you are worried about having yet another user name and password, IntenseDebate supports OpenID. The best part: you probably already have an OpenID account (go here to see why). OpenID allows you to securely sign into a multitude of different online services by means of a unique URL and is supported by a number of internet companies, including Google (if you have a blogspot blog), Yahoo, Flickr, and Technorati.
Better Nerdlets Navigation. IntenseDebate provide a couple of widgets that help increase the usefulness of this site. Most recent comments are show in the sidebar, for example, as are the most popular posts. If enough people sign up with IntenseDebate I can also add a widget that ranks readers by the helpfulness of their comments (which is determined by the aforementioned rating system). This is yet another way you can draw attention to yourself (and your own blog or website) by participating in Nerdlets.
You can find more information here.

Conclusions

The bottom line: your participation on Nerdlets.org not only benifits this site, it now benifits you! I hope that this will increase our ability to dialog about the intersection of Christianity, theology, and computer technology.

Beal: The Temple and the Church’s Mission

What I'm Reading No Responses »

Nov 252008

Lost (and Gained) in Translation

Bible and Hermeneutics, Biblical Greek, Christianity No Responses »

Nov 242008

At a dog-friendly beach in Holland

Some ideas are easily represented in any language, but more often than not translation requires sensitivity to a wide variety of often competing influences.

I just listened to a nice little story on NPR about the “Art of Translation.”

Bea Basso, who came from Italy to the United States in 2000 to study and work in theater, has done a lot of translating from Italian to English. She says that the choice of a single word can determine the arc of an entire work.

“There is no such thing as a literal translation, by nature of choosing one word or another, you influence the next step,” she says.

Listen to the whole story.

Because no two languages are alike, and since the cultural differences surrounding a language are often more than meets the eye, translation is more an art than a science. Translation always involves something lost and also something gained–some of the original is gone, but there is also often additional meaning in the translation that was not there in the text being translated. For proof, type in some text here. The results can be comic.

This is true of all translation, but with Greek (or Hebrew, or any other “dead” language) the matter is complicated by the fact that the original culture is no longer there for us to study. Translation suddenly intersects with historical research, sociology, theology, and a wealth of other disciplines, which is one reason it is so important for pastors to learn Greek.

Technology at SBL

Tech/Gadgets No Responses »

Nov 232008

Biblical Studies and Technology Tools has a run down of some of the new technology presented at SBL. Read about that here.

Bibleworks 8 Announced

Biblical Greek, Software No Responses »

Nov 212008

The folks over at BibleWorks have announced the release of the eighth iteration of their software product. The announcement includes an extensive list of upgrades and new features. Read the whole announcement. Here are some highlights:

New Features

The biggest advances appear to be in the area of searching and analysis (rather than text handling or diagramming, though there are a few additions here as well). They have added a new phrase matching tool, as well as some other search improvements:

Over lunch in mid-2007, we asked ourselves, “How could we find all verses which are similar to each other?” Out of this discussion came the Phrase Matching Tool and Related Verses Tool. The new Phrase Matching Tool takes your current verse and finds all verses containing similar phrases. The new Related Verses Tool finds all verses using some of the same words from the current verse.

They are also adding in an “External Resource Manager” that lats you organize and collect your massive storehouse of documents, PDFs, and images into Bibleworks’s main interface. Personally I use Zotero for this, but some might like this feature.

New Databases

Two additional modern grammars are now available in the suite: Waltke/O’Connor for Hebrew and Wallace for Greek. The complete Early Church Fathers is also available (only the Apostolic Fathers are available in BW 7).More importantly, Bibleworks will finally include the Greek Text of the OT Pseudepigrapha (BW 7 included the Apocrypha, but not the Pseudepigrapha), which is a much needed addition. The Targum of the Psalms will also be added, though only in English.

Thoughts

There are a couple of features that would motivate me to upgrade from BibleWorks 7, and only one of them appears to be included: the OT Pseudopigrapha. I would really like to see Bibleworks include a robust semantic diagramming module (Logos has one). And I wish BDAG was bundled with the rest of the suite (though that is Chicago’s fault). BibleWorks also needs to seriously improve it’s map functionality (the map module is excessively sluggish on my computer, and my computer is rarely excessively sluggish). The most serious need in my opinion is full-fledged Unicode support. They claimed this would be available in Bibleworks 7, and while oen can certainly export text in Unicode, it is not native built it. ASCII is dead as a doornail. There should be no ASCII text visible in BibleWorks, especially since it attempts to handle so many languages.

I am optimistic, but need a couple of more features explained before I am ready to purchase. Stay tuned for updates!

Purchase

Bibleworks 8 can be purchased by visiting the Bibleworks site. Special upgrade prices are available for those with Bibleworks 6 or Bibleworks 7. Bibleworks will not ship out until mid-December, however, so you still have some time.

Zotero Gets New Partners

Software 2 Responses »

Nov 212008

A question came up in the Zotero Workshop I did last night: what are Zotero’s future prospects? Will development continue to be strong, or is this a passing fad? The question is a good one, particularly considering Zotero’s ongoing lawsuit with EndNote, but the answer is pretty easy to come by: development for Zotero is, and will continue to be, strong.

As evidence, consider Zotero’s recently announced partnership with Emory:

Rick Luce, Emory University’s Vice Provost and Director of Libraries briefly described the partnership: “Partnering on the development of open source software with CHNM, an established center of excellence in the digital humanities, allows the Emory Libraries to create value for the research community while sharing the risks in developing innovative software.”

Emory’s Zotero team will take advantage of local research environments and library expertise at Emory to contribute to Zotero’s growth. You can read the full press release here.

Setting Up Zotero: Link by Link

Software, Webapps and Websites 49 Responses »

Nov 202008

The following is a set of links that will be useful for those trying to set up Zotero on their computers. (Not sure what Zotero is or why you would want it? Check out their site, and don’t miss the demo video).

Initial Setup

Firefox Web Browser. Zotero runs as a plugin within this excellent browser.
The Zotero Plugin. There are two options here. Pick one of the following:
- Zotero 2.0 Beta (recommended). This is the latest release. It is Beta software, which means you may experience bugs. But I have been using this release for sometime and have not experienced any problems. There are several advantages of this release: online syncing (though see below), rich-text editor, more functionality. Create an account online to store your Zotero database here.
- Zotero Version 1.0. This is the “safe” option, but you loose some functionality, and I have not had any problems with the “cutting-edge” version above. This version will be upgraded soon, so whichever option you pick will be fine in the long term.

Learning Zotero

Demo Video
Tour of Features
Quick Start Guide
Dan Cohen’s Blog often has good Zotero-related news
As does my blog.

Extending Zotero

Plugins for Microsoft Word or OpenOffice
- If you chose the Beta version, go here and follow the instructions.
- If you downloaded the regular 1.0 version, go here and follow the instructions.
Customized Bibliography Styles. Zotero comes with a wide variety of default styles, including Chicago. But if there is a specific style that you need, check out this link to see if it is available. Researchers in Biblical Studies might be particularly interested in the SBL Style. Just click and Zotero will install everything for you.

Securing Zotero

Use the Sync Preview release (above). It will securely back up and sync all your information and notes online, which can be accessed here. It does not backup stored files or PDFs, however; only text.
If you are computer savvy, you can set up a WebDAV server to store and sync your entire Zotero database. This is like option (1) but also stores PDFs and other files. Check out this forum for suggestions.
Use Dropbox. This is the best possible solution. Install Dropbox and then open your Zotero preferences dialog. Go to the Advanced tab, then place your Zotero database in a custom location: your “My Dropbox” folder. Now anytime a change is made the Dropbox software will upload it in real-time. You can also use this to sync your Zotero database accross multiple computers, and it includes all your files (movies, PDFs, images, etc). Your data is encrypted on Dropbox’s servers, so you don’t have to worry about security concerns.

Update: I should mention one issue I have had with the Dropbox solution. Dropbox cannot save open files, which means it will not upload or download your Zotero database until you close Firefox. If you are syncing your Zotero database across two computers, be aware of this limitation. Make sure you close Firefox on both computers, and that Dropbox has finished syncing all the data, before you switch workstations. Dropbox does save conflicting copies of files, so your data should ultimately be safe, but it may be a lot of work to recover it.

Update: This post was modified from the original on Sept. 17 2009 to bring it in line with the current status of the Zotero project.

Using OpenOffice as an Outliner

Software No Responses »

Nov 192008

In addition to its basic word processing power, OpenOffice has fairly robust outling features. Check out a guide on how to use it here. This works very nicely in conjunction with the previously mentioned guide to the navigation panel.

Zondervan Acquires “The City”

Christian Living, Webapps and Websites 1 Response »

Nov 182008

Mars Hill Church developed “The City,” a Facebook-like Web site, in order to create a “Real, not virtual, community, for Jesus’ fame.” Zondervan has recently acquired this software system.

MarketWatch reports:

Developed over the past two years by Mars Hill pastor of technology, Zack Hubert, who spent eight years in management at Amazon.com, The City was created in response to the church’s need to improve communication, better engage with members, support small groups, build a stronger church community and free up administrative resources. Mars Hill launched The City earlier this year to create a dynamic, engaging interactive online community for its more than 7,000 members. Within two months of launch more than 85% of the church’s members had signed up and more than 75% visit the site every single day.

“The City is an essential part of the way our members and our staff communicate every day,” said Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill’s founding and preaching pastor. “Thanks to Zondervan churches and organizations around the world will have access to this resource to help people meet Jesus and build community.”

Zondervan plans to build out the current features of The City and offer scalable and customizable modules to churches nationwide who want to create their own vibrant, interactive community for members.

See The City in action, here. (This is how webcasts should be made, by the way—an excellently done example of Christians using technology to great effect!)

Some Recommended Fiction

Books 3 Responses »

Nov 182008

In this post I extolled the importance of Fiction. Here is some recommended reading to get you started. The books range from Children’s literature to thrillers to some noteworthy classics to diamonds-in-the-rough.