The always interesting Phil Gons has a wonderful guide to blogging in Greek and Hebrew. You can find that here.
Looks like he is prioritizing Gentium as a Greek font, which is also my font of choice. And if you don’t know how to type in (Unicode) Greek and Hebrew, make sure you check out this post.
If you are a blogger (and that includes Bibliobloggers!), and you haven’t already heard the news, be aware that new FCC guidelines may affect you. Here’s an explanation from the fine folks at CNET:
Independent bloggers who fail to disclose paid reviews or freebies can face up to $11,000 in fines from the Federal Trade Commission, according to revisions to the agency’s “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” published Monday.
So if you are reviewing a book, and you received that book for free, you now need to note that in your review. Silly, right? Well, I agree, and so does the Internet Advertising Bureau, but we’re stuck with it for now.
On a related note, I receive occasional gift certificates from the always wonderful wtsbooks.com on a click-by-click basis. If that bothers you, then I suggest you don’t click any links for books on this site.
The good folks over at Biblioblog have added Nerdlets to their list of Biblical Studies Blogs. Sure we’re just “related blogs” (under the “techie” category) for now, but maybe someday we’ll be upgraded!
Every month Biblioblog posts the Top 50 BiblioBlogs based on their specified constraints.
A blog is included in the rankings if it contains substantial content related to biblical studies or closely related fields, evidences a scholarly approach to biblical studies (not requiring academic qualifications, but excluding blogs with mainly homiletic or devotional content, unscholarly approaches, or a primarily theological focus), and is currently active and posting.
Ranking is based on information supplied by Alexa for the current month. Blogs are ordered by the monthly traffic rankings provided by Alexa, a website which provides traffic rankings for each website or blog. In the occasional event that only the 3-monthly results are available in any particular month (not the monthly results), we will use the 3-monthly results as a proxy for the monthly results.
The Inspiration for almost everything about Nerdlets...
I have found this to be a great site to find new content—perhaps youre favorite author or professor has a site you don’t know about—so check out the complete list. For a competing list try here.
In addition to their excellent reftagger plugin, which provides blog readers with Bible verse popups whenever they hover over a Biblical reference (try it with Heb. 1:1), Bible.Logos.com is now offering a free Bible Search Bar widget to put in your sidebar. Biblical Bloggers should definitely look into this as it makes things easier for your readers. Logos explains:
If you have biblical content on your website or blog, you’ll definitely want to consider adding the new Bible Search Bar to your sidebar. RefTagger allows your readers to have instant access to the Bible passages that you cite in your post, but what if they want to look up a verse that you don’t mention or launch a search for a word or phrase that you discuss? They could manually navigate to Bible.Logos.com, but the Bible Search Bar makes it even easier for your readers to find what they’re looking for.
The sidebar add-in comes in many shapes and sizes, and should be a convenient addition to any biblical blog. You can get it here. And don’t forget reftagger, if you don’t have it installed already, here.
I can’t believe it either, but it appears to be true: Microsoft is giving stuff away for free. Here’s the scoop.
Thinking about starting a blog for personal or church use? Your first decision is what platform to use. It’s an important choice since it is difficult to change services. ChurchCrunch has an excellent overview and analysis of the available options.
ChurchCrunch has compiled a list of blogging platforms used by the top 60 church blogs. WordPress Wins (of course), but the results are interesting.
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).
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.
Logos Bible Software has recently updated their excellent blogging tool RefTagger. It adds new versions (NASB, for all those Old-School Reformed Blogs out there). It also allows readers to select their own version, if you choose to give them such freedom. It’s also now much easier to install on a WordPress blog. Check out all the details, complete with a download link, at the Logos Blog.
