Software | Nerdlets

Zotero 2.0 Launches (What a Pleasant Surprise!)

Computing, Research Tools, Software, Webapps and Websites 9 Responses »

May 142009

Get the latest from Zotero

Zotero has just released the beta of their 2.0 upgrade, and it looks awesome. Here is the announcement.

The most important upgrade is the promised addition of groups and collaboration.

Groups provide a powerful way to share collections with a class, work closely with a colleague on a project, keep track of conversations in your field more broadly, and keep tabs on what people at your institution or in your department are working on. To copy items into any of your groups just drag and drop items from your library into any of your group libraries and subcollections. Below you can see an image of your groups inside Zotero.

Your group can be published as a web page, either public or private. I am really looking forward to trying this out (and reporting back here at Nerdlets). The promise for teaching is extraordinary! It could provide a whole new level of interaction in the classroom, not to mention among colleagues and fellow researchers.

Other features are also in the works:

As we refine this beta release, the Zotero team will roll out its recommendation engine, a storage solution for sharing attached files, more ways to navigate through collections online, and the ability to view feeds from public groups and libraries.

Stay tuned for updates. I look forward to posting a full review and guide in the near future.

You can get the latest release here. I have a quick-start guide posted here.

Spell Check your Ancient Greek in OpenOffice

Biblical Greek, Christianity, Computing, How to, Research Tools, Software No Responses »

Apr 292009

: Image via Wikipedia

Are you using Unicode to type in ancient Greek (if not, follow this guide)? Do your prefer OpenOffice to Microsoft Office? Well today is the day where it all pays off. There is only one Word Processor in the world that spell-checks ancient Greek, and that’s OpenOffice. You can set it up by installing this plugin for OpenOffice 2.4 or higher.

Protect Yourself from the Conficker Worm

Computing, How to, Software 2 Responses »

Mar 312009

You may have heard about a new threat to your computer: the Conflicker worm. Over 3 million computers are infected, and the scary thing is, you won’t know if you’ve got it until it’s too late. By too late, I mean tomorrow, when the worm “activates” and starts making a real mess of things. What will happen? NPR has the (slightly oversimplified) details about April 1:

That’s when many of the poisoned machines will get more aggressive about “phoning home” to the worm’s creators over the Internet. When that happens, the bad guys behind the worm will be able to trigger the program to send spam, spread more infections, clog networks with traffic, or try and bring down Web sites.

Technically, this could cause havoc, from massive network outages to the creation of a cyberweapon of mass destruction that attacks government computers. But researchers who have been tracking Conficker say the date will probably come and go quietly.

By “go quietly” NPR means that there will probably not be a massive world-wide shutdown of the internet. That’s all well and good, but your computer may still be infected, and this can and will massively slow down your own internet connection, as well as more significant problems. The best option is to fix the issue by following this excellent guide.

You may also want to consider using OpenDNS in the future, which is a faster and safer way to access the internet, and has been Conflicker-free for awhile now. It’s pretty easy: follow this guide.

As usual, Mac and Linux users are safe and sound.

Download Internet Explorer 8 (Please!)

Books, Software No Responses »

Mar 192009

: Image via Wikipedia

Now don’t get me wrong, I still think everyone should be using Firefox as their default web-browser. But I’m a realist, and sometimes you just need Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). And if you’re going to use Microsoft, then you should really definitely immediately download IE8, released today at noon.

There are a whole host of reasons to do this—security, speed, eye-candy, convenience, lots of new features—but the most important reason is to support Microsoft in their new not-evil policies. For the first time ever Internet Explorer will be standards-compliant by default. This is good news for browsers, programmers, and Microsoft; it will truly change the web be ensuring that every web page is viewable regardless of Operating System or Browser.

So if you’re running Windows, download today. You’ll be glad you did, and you will be doing something good for all of us!

In the interest of full-disclosure, I should mention that viewing this site in IE7 results in a couple of formatting problems (with 3rd-party widgets and things), but IE8 displays everything perfectly. This is because IE8 is now standards-compliant! Thanks Microsoft!

eBook of the Greek New Testament (UBS4) for the Kindle, iPod, or iPhone

Bible and Hermeneutics, Biblical Greek, Books, Research Tools, Software 8 Responses »

Mar 142009

Update: The links to the ebook in question have been (preemptively) removed because of licensing issues. Such licensing issues are not an issue for the SBLGNT, which now has a kindle version available. So download that instead!

Having Googled long and hard for a free, accented, open-source, Unicode eBook of the Greek New Testament, and to no avail, I decided to make one myself.

Getting the Book

You can download the NA26/UBS4 Greek New Testament eBook in the following formats (right-click and “Save File As”): Kindle, Palm, mobi, and xhtml. Follow the instructions for your device. The Kindle version is the best, so use that if your device supports it. You can convert eBook files using the free application Calibre.

iPhone and iPod Touch users can use the free application Stanza with this guide to get everything set up (it’s easy).

If you need another format for your reader, try Stanza’s Desktop Reader to convert one format to another.

I will post about new releases and improvements on this site, so if you like what you see you may want to subscribe. There are a couple of improvements I would like to make–like sub-chapters and a better Table of Contents–but that will have to wait for another time. Stay tuned!

Licensing

The source text is for this eBook came from the MorphGNT with UBS4 (ver. 5.08) by CCAT and James Tauber, as produced by the Work Viewer web-app created by the Open Scriptures project. It is the same Greek text you will find on the much more robust Resurgence Greek Project and was originally derived from NA26.

This eBook is distributed and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, as allowed and required by the use of MorphGNT.

(pre

Songbird 1.1 Released

Software No Responses »

Mar 112009

Tightening done If you’re looking for a good open-source media player alternative to iTunes or WMP, consider Songbird. Songbird 1.1 was released today and shows significant improvement over previous versions.

Unicode Guide for Mac Users

Biblical Greek, Christianity, Software No Responses »

Mar 062009

If you ever type in Greek, Hebrew, or any other language that requires special characters, then you need to make sure you are using a Unicode font. I have written up a pretty thorough guide to using Unicode fonts in Windows and/or Linux, but my Mac knowledge is flaky. If you’re a Mac user and are interested in typing in Greek or Hebrew then follow this guide.

Regardless of your operating system you might also be interested in my introduction to Unicode.

Next Version of MS Office Will Support OpenOffice Files

How to, Linux, Software No Responses »

Mar 052009

Some good news from Microsoft: Office 14 and the next Service Pack for Office 2007 will natively support the OpenDocument format (ODF) used by such software as OpenOffice.org and Google Docs. This open-source format has been adopted as a standard by recognized computing organizations and governments worldwide, succeededing to gain support in many areas that Microsoft’s OpenXML format has failed, which has put pressure on MS to respond with a similarly “open” format.

Cnet reports:

For a company that is happy to list a million reasons why Office is better than OpenOffice or Google Docs or other rivals, Microsoft sure is putting a tremendous amount of effort into working better with those products.
The next version of Office will natively support the OpenDocument format (as will the next service pack for Office 2007). As it is developing the next Office, Microsoft is also documenting every change it is making as part of its commitment to documenting all of Office’s various formats and protocols.

For those unable or unwilling to wait, you can download a plugin for MS Office that will add ODF support now. There is one from Sun (which I am given to understand is the version to be included in Office 2007 SP2 and later) or from the OpenOffice community.

Even More PDF Tools

Research Tools, Software, Webapps and Websites No Responses »

Mar 052009

As a follow-up to my previous post, here is an excellent review of some more great PDF conversion and manipulation tools.

Also I am happy to report that I have had good success converting PDF images to plain text with OCR terminal, so give it a try!

New Unicode Greek Font with Text-Critical Glyphs

Biblical Greek, Software 3 Responses »

Mar 032009

Rod Decker and Danny Zacharias have reported about a new unicode Greek font that will be of particular interest to those that need text-critical glyphs. From Zacharias’s blog:

I’ve just been made aware of an excellent Greek unicode font that is the most thorough I have ever come across. Designed for the papyrologist and text-critical scholar in mind. The font is called IFAO-Grec and can be downloaded at the bottom of this page. You will see also a documentation page, which lists all of the extra characters available.

You can download the font here.

Rod Decker mentioned in a comment that the font is offered free of licensing constraints:

The only statements I can find re. licensing issues is that “IFAO-Grec Unicode is issued free of all rights” and: “Elle est gratuite et libre de droits” (~ “It is free and free of copyright”). There does not appear to be any reference to any of the “Open” licenses.

This is not quite the protection I would recommend (see my post about Greek font recommendations) but if you need a full text-critical arsenal, this might be a good option.

For most of us, however, some other open-licensed Unicode font might be preferable. Check out my guide for more information and font recommendations for Greek (and Hebrew).