Nerdlets » Software

Bible Apps for Android

Tommy — Tue, 03 May 2011 19:28:36 +0000

If you’re looking for Bible Applications for your Android phone/tablet/device, and especially if you are in the market for Greek/Hebrew applications, then check out this post.

ESV Bible App for Android Releases

Tommy — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 23:30:27 +0000

The folks at Crossway want you to have a very Merry Christmas and so just now released a beta version of their popular ESV app for Android. I’ve been doing a little poking around on it and it’s almost identical to the very nice iPhone version. Search the Android Market and you’ll find it (Crossway is the publisher, so don’t get distracted by 3rd patty apps).

Check out the official announcement here: http://www.crossway.org/blog/2010/12/esv-bible-android-0-9-beta/

Zotero Goes Cross Platform

Tommy — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 01:10:59 +0000

Zotero’s previously announced plans to move Zotero out of Firefox and into, well, everything is getting closer to realization. It’s a major push to make Zotero available everywhere, and to allow you to integrate your libraries and research with all sorts of different platforms and interfaces (IE, Firefox, Chrome, mobile, etc.) through a set of APIs.

I could go on an on about how great this is, but there’s no need, as David Stark has already done all the heavy lifting. He beats me to the punch every time! You can find the official announcement here, and a full and very helpful run down at ReadWriteWeb here.

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Logos Rolls out Biblia.com, with Desktop Integration

Tommy — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:21:30 +0000

David Stark at New Testament Interpretation reports on the (still beta) roll-out of Biblia.com, an excellent web resource for Biblical Studies. Check out the full report here, or if you’d just like to see the goods, check that out here.

ESV Study Bible Now Available on iOS Devices

Tommy — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:02:01 +0000

The folks at Crossway have produced a really phenomenal application for iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. The iPad version is especially handy, with an interface perfectly fit for its widescreen. The app is currently on a promotional sale ($9.99), so check it out on iTunes.

Via: What’s Best Next

Make Your Zotero Collections Recursive

Tommy — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:30:29 +0000

Do you use Zotero? Do you wish that your folder collections showed all the items in their various subfolders? I do. And there is a hidden setting in Zotero to allow you to change the behavior.

Here’s the official explanation:

By default, each of your collections displays only the items you have placed there. When you place a collection inside another collection, the contents of the second collection are not added to the first. If you enable recursive collections, items from subcollections will appear in all higher-level collections.

To change this behavior, type the following into your Firefox URL bar:

about:config

Be careful when you are on this special page. Firefox stores all of its settings here, and you can really mess things up if you go poking around without knowing what you are doing.

In the “filter” bar at the top of the page type:

zotero.recursive

You should see a line pop up that says:

extensions.zotero.recursiveCollections

Set the “value” of this setting to “true,” which you can do by double-clicking the line.

Now your folders are recursive! You can find other “hidden” settings, and what they do, here.

Logos 4 Ready to Roll

Tommy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:04:21 +0000

I don’t use the software and so cannot comment on it personally, but Mike Aubrey has a thorough review of the new version of the always well-received Logos platform of bible study tools Check it out. I have been particularly interested in the sentence flow diagramming feature of the platform. Someday I will be able to try it out, but those who are already using Logos should comment on your experiences below!

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Get Real Text out of your Scanned Documents

Tommy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:52:38 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

OCR is the technology used to turn an image of text into plain (editable, search-able) text. If you’re like me (i.e., a nerd) you probably have a pile of scanned journal articles and books and such meticulously sorted on your hard drive (PDFs for example). You can read them and print them, but you can’t search them or edit them. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could?

Well, there are a number of free options on the web, but they all have their problems. Google has some of the best OCR technology out there–they recently acquired CAPTCHA to make it even better–and they have apparently been rolling this out into Google Docs. The Google Docs version is not as wonderful as you might like, but it works on high-res documents. Read about how to turn your images into text here.

Update: I was not able to get this to work with PDFs, surprisingly. The web-app only accepts PNG, JPEG, or GIF images right now. That is unfortunate, and I assume will be “corrected” in the future. Has anyone tried this on an image yet?

Google and the Web OS

Tommy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:09:11 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

We’ve commented on this before at Nerdlets, but now there is a definitive reason for doing so. It’s not really a surprise, but Google is about to tie all its seemingly disparate services together. Introducing the Google Operating System. Why a new operating system? Well, we use our computers differently now. We use them to access the web. Your browser, by and large, is your OS (at least according to Google), which is why Google has recently invested so much time into their entry into the browser wars: Google Chrome.

And the Google OS is actually the Google Chrome OS. According to Google, it is little more than a (Linux!) wrapper around Google’s browser. There is therefore no need to download, install, or develop applications. According to the official Google Blog post:

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

There are advantages to this approach. Developers can spend their time programming applications that work on any Computer, and because users do not have to install, update, tweak, or otherwise fuss with their applications, developers can pump out updates quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, provided your browser is secure, you need not worry too much about viruses and malware, or at least not yet. And, of course, since all your data is on the web, you can access your files anywhere! Finally, since Google promises that it’s vision will remain Open Source focused, you (presumably) will not need to worry about Google hijacking your data. If Google does something you don’t like, you can just switch.

There are serious disadvantages as well. Your data is on a server somewhere, and not on your computer. There is also a certain amount of loss of control.

Windows, Linux, and OSX take a hybrid approach to the OS and browser relationship, and I prefer that personally. With the mainstream operating systems your data resides primarily on your computer, but is synced to the web at your request. This is what I practice, since I don’t always have an Internet connection.

So what do you fine folks think? Is the future of computing web-based services running in your browser, or is it something more like what we’re doing now? Your comments are welcome!

Update: Some excellent analysis by Louis Gray.

Firefox 3.5 is Faster, Slicker, and Ready to Download

Tommy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:45:25 +0000

The latest version of Firefox is ready for download, and it will be worth the time.

There is a lot to love about the new release, but perhaps the most important improvement is speed. Speed matters now more than ever. We’re not talking about download speeds here, but more important things like application speed—how fast your browser can process Flash videos, or javascript applications. Why does this matter to you? Because most of the websites you browse every day, like Facebook or Hulu, use a lot of programming technologies that your browser has to process. Since we are all doing more and more computing tasks online, like reading email, updating our facebook accounts, or watching movies, browser speed takes on a whole new meaning, and Firefox 3.5 is noticeably faster.

There are a whole host of other important updates, which you can read about here.

You can download the latest version here.