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
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.
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It’s been awhile since the last Strangelet, the Nerdlets.org repository of all wacky, weird, or unexpected news. But today marks a strange blast from the past. Those familiar terms like “CGA” and “Cobal” will be glad to learn that their nostalga for outdated games will soon be satisfied, curtosy of the iPhone.
That’s right: the Oregon Trail, the ultimate in ambiguously educational gaming will soon be available for the iPhone. Now you can get sick with Malaria in the comfort of the passenger seat of your minivan.
Several stories have caught my intention of late. We all know, of course, that the proliferation of computers, and especially the Internet, has changed the way we communicate, shop, talk, think, and research. What’s interesting to me is the trickle-up trends that have been occurring more recently. Old and stalwart institutions are often the slowest to change and embrace new technology, and often for good reasons, but two stories indicate that those days are over.
The first involves the Pope. More particularly, the Pope’s new You Tube channel.
The second is more complicated (and therefore interesting) due to security issues. The Obama administration is changing the way the government uses technology. There are quite a few indicators here.
All in all, an interesting trend!
I don’t have an iPhone, but if I did this would be a likely first download. I love access to my documents…
Google Calendar now syncs with Apple’s iCal, Mozilla’s Sunbird, or Thunderbird (with the Lightning extension) without any additional plugins or even all that much work. Follow these instructions.
Google Calendar with one of these applications provides the perfect online/offline solution to scheduling. Individuals and organizations alike can benifit from this.
Open source software isn’t just for Windows and Linux. Most of the best and the brightest run on Macs too. Check out this list of 25 useful free software programs for you Apple.
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.
Google is entering the browser wars.
But true to its “Don’t be evil” slogan, Google is not really waging a war. In fact, just last week Google announced that they would continue their support of Mozilla’s Firefox browser until at least 2011.
So why launch a new web browser?
Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.
What, more specifically, does Google think it can contribute?
Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.
On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.
In other words, Google’s browser will apparently focus on web applications, rather than on the comparatively “simple” matter of web browsing. This reflects a more general trend towards “Web 2.0/3.0″ and, to bring in another buzz word, “Cloud Computing.” In short: Google anticipates that more and more of your interaction with the computer will actually be interaction with the web. The software you use, the files you store, and the Operating System you run will increasingly be web-based, not hardware-based (Microsoft agrees, by the way). To put the matter even more succinctly, in 10 years Google expects that your web browser will be your OS. I suspect that their release of this new browser is intended to reflect this prophecy, while at the same time assisting Google (in its real war against Microsoft) to fulfill its own prediction. A self-fulfilling prophecy, in browser form.
Will it work? We will see (I personally would like to see a hybrid system—I hope the “cloud” will be grounded in open-source-supported home-hardware). In the meantime, it is encouraging to again reiterate: Google is still supporting Mozilla, and in addition to this continued Firefox support, which serves Google’s own interest (for the time being), they have committed to an open-source model for their own offering:
We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we’re committed to continuing on their path. We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others — and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.
This is a good move (and the only legal one available to them, since Mozilla publishes Firefox ‘s code under an open-source license that requires open-source reciprocation).
So how can you get your hands on this technology?
Check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We’ll post an update here as soon as it’s ready.
The only hurdle I can foresee here is the recent controversy Google has had over privacy issues (regarding ad-targetting in Gmail, the Viacom/YouTube controversy, and, of course, Google street-view concerns). But Google makes such good “products,” it’s hard not to trust them.
Read the whole story here.
The most recent iPhone iteration (yes, there are still lines at Apple stores nationwide) has apparently inspired Vern Poythress to offer up some reflections about science and technology within a Christian worldview. Really interesting stuff, particularly the positive connection between technology and dominion, and the negative warning against technological messianism.
