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Dropbox Saved my Butt Today

 Webapps and Websites  No Responses »
Jan 022009
 

Well, I’m back after the holidays. Quess what happened on my New Years?

For reasons that boggle the mind, I decided to type in the Linux equivalent of “format c:/”. Seriously. The result? My entire Windows partition is irrevocably gone.

Not a problem. I back up my data. Everything iimportant is safe, and all my dissertation research is secure, largely because of an excellent backup utility called Dropbox. I put all my important files into my dropbox and they are automatically synced accross multiple computers, and online. So after a little drag-and-drop, I’m back to work.

Back up Zotero

As many of you know I am a big advocate of Zotero for research and bibliographic management. It is worth noting that by default Zotero puts all required files in your Firefox folder, which is generally not backed up by most software. You can always add it to your Dropbox, but a better idea is to change your settings. Go into Zotero’s Preferences dialog and the Advanced Settings to set a new location for Zotero files. Put it in your My Documents folder under a subfolder called “Zotero.” Almost all backup software will backup you My Documents folder by default, so this is the safest place.

One Dropbox Limitation

One thing to be noted: Dropbox is not true backup software. True backup software archives your files on a periodic basis. Dropbox does something a little different; it mirrors you files. Any changes you make on your computer are automatically changed in your dropbox. If you overwrite or delete a file, it will be overwritten or deleted in dropbox.

This might be a problem, except Dropbox saves all revisions, so if you do something stupid, and then your stupidity is mirrored by Dropbox, you can “undo” your changes by going to the Web interface and clicking “Restore my files.” That’s what I had to do, and it worked flawlessly and quickly.

Thanks Dropbox!

Make a New Year’s Resolution

I have two suggestions for nerdy New Year’s resolutions: (1) Backup your data, (2) Use Super-User priveledges responsibly.

Livedrive Offers Unlimited Online Storage

 Webapps and Websites  No Responses »
Dec 202008
 

It’s a good idea to have an online backup of your important files, provided the service that provides the online space is reliable and secure. There are many such services (I have previously recommended Dropbox and Mozy). Those who need lots of space (for pictures, for example, or to have your music available anywhere you go) might be interested in Livedrive, which unlike all other services allows you an unlimited amount of space. Check out Lifehacker’s take on the subject here.

The only problem at this point is lack of information. I have not been able to determine how my files are secured and protected, among other things, and I would also be interested to know how the service plans to make money (particularly since you have to give them your address and phone number to sign up). But still, unlimited space is pretty awesome, so if you have some large files that you want to store or share online, Livedrive might be worth a try. Just don’t rely on it as your only backup (at least not yet) or use it to store private information.

Update: After further poking and prodding it appears that Livedrive will not be free past the initial Beta period. I guess this proves the old addage: if it sounds to good to be true… Sorry for the hasty post, I should have done more research before publishing this.

Some Reviews of Bible Software

 Biblical Greek, Research Tools, Software, Webapps and Websites  No Responses »
Dec 132008
 

Fostertribe has finished compiling his list of Bible Software reviews. This is a very handy guide to (largely introductory) Bible software. Bibleworks doesn’t make the list, nor do a couple of online tools, but the guide is very helpfully organized. Anyone interested in an introductory desktop program for reading and searching the Bible should check it out.

For an in depth look at the upcoming version of Bibleworks, check out this series of posts.

For online software, go here and here.

And anyone interested in a quick and handy tool for searching and listening to the Bible online should read my Ubiquity guide.

Politics and Technology

 Culture, Tech/Gadgets  No Responses »
Dec 122008
 

Obama was hailed by supporters and detractors alike for his tech-awareness (Twitter, Blackberry, a very well put-together web site, etc). It seems, however, that Obama has the same problems with technology that everyone else has. He may have to give up his Blackberry, for example, over security issues.

More interestingly, Obama’s “Open for Questions” website, a Digg-like system that allows interested parties to ask questions of Obama and vote on those of other users, has run into problems. Politico reports:

It was suggested when it launched that the tool would bring uncomfortable questions to the fore, but the results so far are the opposite: Obama’s supporters appear to be using — and abusing — a tool allowing them to “flag” questions as “inappropriate” to remove all questions mentioning Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich from the main pages of Obama’s website.

The Blagojevich questions — many of them polite and reasonable — can be found only by searching words in them, like “Blagojevich,” which produces 35 questions missing from the main page of the site. ….

Declaring a question “inappropriate” is different from merely voting it down; it’s calling foul on a question, not just disapproving of it.

Community reporting systems like this are often vulnerable to abuse from committed partisans — YouTube has wrestled with a parallel problem — and the only solution is conscious efforts to remedy it.

So far, Obama’s team does not seem to have stepped in to allow uncomfortable questions to rise to the top, and instead is allowing his supporters to sanitize the site.

Read the whole article.

The Blagojevich question is not the only politely inquiry question to be flagged. Justin Taylor posted a link to his question about the Freedom of Choice Act here, and according to the comments in this post (and my own visit to the site), it was flagged shortly thereafter as inappropriate.

Obama’s tech savvy is laudable, but it may be that in practice his administration will not differ all that much from what McCain’s might have been.

WebNotes Lets You Annotate the Web

 Research Tools, Webapps and Websites  2 Responses »
Dec 112008
 
Use WebNotes to annotate your favorite sites

Use WebNotes to annotate your favorite sites

The web is now a primary arena for serious research. With Google Scholar, the Internet Archive, academic blogs where writers self-publish their complete works (such as this one), it is now possible to do a whole host of respectable research on the internet.

But how do you take notes on a web page? Should you print it out? That seems to miss the point. Use Zotero? Sure, for simple things, but it would be nice to have a dedicated web-note taking system (to complement Zotero’s functionality).

Enter WebNote. From ReadWriteWeb:

There are any number of services that offer the ability to annotate Web pages or share finds with friends. So why spend time on WebNotes? Because it seems awfully serious about providing the types of features that allow professional researchers to do online research – and only those features.

Anyone who has spent a great deal of time doing research by sifting through printed materials will immediately notice that WebNotes offers the two most critical research tools for any bookworm: sticky notes and a highlighter. But it also offers a filing system that allows users to categorize notes and pages under topical areas, as well as the option to share your findings with others.

Read the whole thing for a full review and list of features. I have been initially impressed with the software, which runs as a plugin for your web browser.

The service is still in private beta, so you will have to request an invite. I have 10 invite codes available, so if you want one, request it in the comments or email me at tommy@nerdlets.org.

Use Ubiquity to Listen to the Bible Online

 Bible and Hermeneutics, Software  14 Responses »
Dec 092008
 
Use Ubiquity to Read the Bible

Use Ubiquity to Read the Bible

It is now even easier to search, read, and even listen to the Bible online.

A much improved upgrade to Ubiquity has been released, making this ground-breaking Firefox plugin prettier, more robust, and exceedingly versatile. More to the point, the ESV command for this plugin has also been updated, and the update allows you to listen to the Bible as you browse. You can watch the video at the end of this post for a full demonstration and how-to instructions.

If you are already familiar with Ubiquity, then download the latest version and install the ESV command. If not, read on for a short introduction.

What is Ubiguity?

Ubiquity is a plugin for the Firefox browser. You can read the full introduction, complete with an excellent video demonstration, here. In a nutshell: it gives your browser a basic understanding of language. You can use Ubiquity to type in simple commands in order to make Firefox do things that it would normally require several clicks and minutes to do.

Check the weather with Ubiquity

Check the weather with Ubiquity

Take checking the weather as an example. The old way: (1) open up a new tab, (2) type in the URL of the weather site, (3) type in your zip code, (4) scroll past adds and other useless information. The Ubiquity way: (1) Type in “Weather”, (2) Wait while ubiquity does everything for you (it uses your IP address to automatically determine your location, check the weather site, and output todays weather in the same window).

Ubiquity Commands

Ubiquity includes a number of built in commands, such as “wikipedia” to search the site with that title, “calculate” to crunch numbers, “add-to-calendar” to add an event to your Google calendar, or “twitter” to change your twitter status. You can see all available ubiquity commands by using the command “command-list.”

The true awesomeness of Ubiquity, however, lies in the fact that any web page or service can generate a set of commands that allow you to interact with its services. You can add these commands to Ubiquity by “subscribing” to the page in question. You can find a large list of commands here, but be warned that these should all be considered beta-at-best.

How to Set Up Ubiquity and the ESV Plugin

The good folks in charge of the ESV Bible have provided a ubiquity command that allows readers to search, read, and even listen to the ESV Bible. I have written a small screen cast that shows you how to set this up and also demonstrates some of Ubiquity’s best features.

You will need to go to the following sites in order to set things up.

  1. Download the latest version of Ubiquity here.
  2. Subscribe to the ESV site here.

Below is a brief screencast demonstrating how to get Ubiquity set up, how to install the ESV plugin, and how to use both to do a number of interesting things while you browse the Internet.

Update:

Don’t miss the official video from ubiquity! It’s truly amazing:


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

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.

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.

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