Got this new app that I am trying out on the iPad, it is far superior than the WordPress app, and also supports Blogger. It is very intuitive, and takes full advantage of the iPad touch functionality. The App is called Blogsy and it is currently selling for $2.99. The price will be going up soon, so if you have an iPad and you are a blogger I highly recommend you get this one. WordPress should take a huge lesson from them. it’s a shame that WordPress was not able to produce a usable stable app, let alone an app that would utilize the iPad’s touch abilities.
NIV 2011 Premium Edition Review
Yesterday I received in the mail from Amazon.com my new NIV 2011 Thinline Reference Premium Leather Large Print Black Letter Edition. This is a double column bible, with center reference. Cost $81.89
First impressions are amazing! I own several premium leather bibles and this one overall is the nicest. I highly recommend this bible to anyone shopping for a Premium Leather edition. Here are the things I like best about this edition.
- The font and its size 10.5. The font choice they made is so much better than the choice they had made with the TNIV Renaissance Bible. I never really warmed up to the TNIV font. I think it is too small, and they are too tight making it a bit difficult to read, and I have 20/20 vision. The NIV is using a font that is much better to read possibly Georgia, nicely spread which helps to separate lines.
- Two ribbons, every bible should have two ribbons they are not that expensive, one for the OT, and one for the NT.
- Center-column reference
- Thinline less than one inch think
- Premium supple Leather has lots of character, a bible you just love to hold in your hands and read.
- Stitch binding which allows it to lay perfectly flat when opened
If you are on a budget and really would like to have the Large Print Thinline Reference edition, Zondervan is offering bonded leather editions as well as a Hardback and Duo-Tune. I personally don’t care for bonded leather, I actually prefer the Duo-Tone over it. If I was on a budget I would buy this one, the Italian Duo-Tone Brown for $30.85, and if you prefer you can get the Hardcover for $22.79
Here are some photos for you to enjoy. I show some comparison with the HCSB Premium Leather Legacy bible. That one is also a large print, center column bible. However they used a Time Romans font, and is slightly smaller than the NIV. Also I included some shots with the TNIV Renaissance bible. One thing that I like better on the HCSB Premium Leather bible, is the choice they used for the back of the leather. It appears they didn’t use anything which allows the bible to feel better when you open it, also the leather feels a bit thicker than the NIV 2011. The NIV and TNIV both use some matte paper that is glued to the leather. It’s fine, but I think I would prefer how the HCSB did it. Lastly you will see that TNIV is thickest of all three (not advertised as a Thinline), and the NIV and HCSB are about the same thickness.
Yes I know that I retired from blogging, but I’m actually just semi-retired from blogging. I just had to share this with the rest of you.
Photo Notes:
The side by side comparison for Matthew is the NIV (left) and HCSB (right)
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 20,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.
In 2010, there were 32 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 196 posts. There were 13 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about a picture per month.
The busiest day of the year was March 10th with 121 views. The most popular post that day was HCSB 2nd edition in print?.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were heissufficient.com, newleaven.com, digg.com, rdtwot.wordpress.com, and en.wordpress.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for hcsb study bible, convert pdf to ibook, hcsb study bible 2010, convert pdf to ibooks, and hcsb update.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
HCSB 2nd edition in print? March 2010
7 comments
2
How to convert your PDF’s to iBooks May 2010
8 comments
3
iPad no Copy & Paste from iBooks or Kindle May 2010
21 comments
4
HCSB Study Bible Coming October 2010 November 2009
2 comments
5
HCSB 2nd Edition Ephesians Review January 2009
14 comments
Joining Near Emmaus blogging team
Brian LaPort from http://nearemmaus.wordpress.com has requested bloggers to join his team. He knows the challenges very well on how difficult it can be to blog on a regular basis and at one point he even considered calling it quits. I’m glad he didn’t! A while back I had seriously considered partnering with him but wanted to stick it out and see if I would commit to blogging, an expression that I really enjoy. But here we are half way through the year and I am blogging at a very slow pace, slow enough that I am surprise that anyone is still following me.
I have decided to partner with Brian and start blogging over there. I’ll keep this blog alive and post random thoughts, some tech stuff, general life updates, and not sure what else, well let me put it like this, anything that doesn’t require much thinking or research 😉 I do believe that this blog will server it’s purpose in later years, maybe once I finish school. The original goal of this blog was to have 2 other bloggers in addition to myself. They were two of my friends one is working on his Master’s in theology at Talbot Seminary, the others was a graduate from BIOLA. However they were just to busy to be able to contribute anything. I was left alone to try and keep it alive.
I live a very busy life as most of you know that follow me. I am married with a teenage son, I work full time for IBM, I am the Assistant Pastor at my church, I teach and preach regularly at my church, I oversee various ministries, I just bought a new house (lots of updates that were/are needed), I’m enrolled in school hoping to finish my B.Th a lifelong goal that I have put off for to long, and I want to blog, I really do.
I know that many of you that follow me here already follow Brain, so I look forward to seeing you over there.
Low Tech iPad stand
Interested in a Low-Tech iPad stand? I saw this at TheiPadFreak.org, and it works. The box was sitting in my garage gathering dust. The only difference I did was cut the box so that I can hear the speakers and be able to plug in my iPad. The cut out is on the right side so you can’t see it. On the inside of the box there is a book that is holding it in place, and it is leaning on my low desk hutch. However you can place something on top of the book for it to rest on it like I show in the photo. At iPadFreak on the video they put a water bottle, but I didn’t think that was the best idea.
WiFi tethering coming to Android 2.2
WiFi tethering is coming to Android 2.2 soon to be released. The only question will be if the Carriers will charge for this or not. Currently Verizon charges $40.00 per month to use your phone as a WiFi hotspot. Part of the deal with the Palm Pre Plus was free WiFi hotspot, but that was a promotion to help sell them. I really hope they don’t charge and just let this be part of the OS ability.
WiFi will be highly available like 3G in the near future, or at least highly accessible. London has a major plan in place to have WiFi through out the entire city, and they want to have this ready for the next Summer Olympics that will be held there.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/dsp5MjqZmWE/
I found this article in The Early Edition iPad app.
http://appsto.re/earlyedition
iPad no Copy & Paste from iBooks or Kindle
I am working on my first sermon that I plan on preaching tonight on my iPad. I am typing it completely without the help from any other computer. I am using Pages and OliveTree as my main bible and that combination is working out very well. I also own a Apple BlueTooth keyboard and that is making it super easy to type. And with the recent update in Pages that now allows me to see the toolbar while in landscape mode makes this almost perfect.
I was doing fine until I wanted to quote something from a book that I purchased in iBooks. I opened the book highlighted what I wanted and I was quickly reminded that I can’t copy and paste from iBooks or the Kindle app. This is a major set back and very disappointing. This limits me from being able to solely use the iPad as my only source and forces me to use another system to complete my work.
Workaround: I had to use my desktop 😦
I started to send myself an email with the quote from iBooks when it suddenly dawned on me to use EverNote.com This is a website where you can upload photos, create notes and have them all sync with your mobile phone, or device. iPad has a EverNote app that I have, and I also happen to have one on my Android phone. I created the note in EverNote, and then opened it up on my iPad and I was able to copy and paste from there. Simple enough but not good enough. They need to allow the ability to copy and paste not sure what the fears are but this is a must have. I can copy and paste from OliveTree with no problem.
UPDATE:
Since writing this article I have moved on to Android. This year I purchased the Samsung Note 8, and even when I was still using my iPad I had moved completely over to Kindle. Apple has a closed system which has it’s advantages, but also has it’s draw backs. I try to adopt apps and software that are cross platform, therefor my decision to go primarily with Kindle was easy. However, with the recent updates to Google Play Books (which offers the same sort of options as Kindle). I’m now also considering purchasing books with them if it makes sense. Mostly down to cost, and if the book is also offered in printed format, otherwise I just purchase on Kindle.
I have also stop using evernote, and just use Google Drive.
In case you don’t read the comments, the best solution for Kindle was the following:
Posted by:
I just use
https://read.amazon.com/ in one window and
https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights in other window (refresh second window after highlighting from the first window) to copy and paste
Books of the Bible on the iPad
One of the main purposes that I got the iPad was to read books, PDF’s and of course the Bible. This year I have made it a goal to get back to serious devotional reading, which in recent times always led to research and study. Which is not bad but it is very distracting, and keeps me from doing any sort of meaningful thought provoking devotional reading. I have been working really hard every morning to read the Psalms and the Gospels which is working out pretty good.
The other day I came across the “The Books of the Bible” by Zondervan on iBooks which if you are not familiar with gives you a unique way of reading the bible without any distractions. I read through the book of Epheisans this morning straight through and it was just wonderful. I now plan to use this as my main method of doing my daily devotional reading.
Here is their brief description:
The Books of The Bible differs from the format of most current Bibles in significant ways:
literary forms of the Bible’s books chapter and verse numbers are removed from the text (a chapter-and-verse range is at the bottom of each page) individual books are presented with the literary divisions that their authors have indicated footnotes, section headings and other supplementary materials have been removed from the text (translators’ notes are available at the back of each book) the books of the Bible have been placed in an order that provides more help in understanding, based on literary genre, historical circumstance and theological tradition single books that later translations or tradition divided into two or more books are made whole again (example: Luke-Acts) single-column setting that clearly and naturally presents the
You can purchase these from iBooks for .99 cents each and the whole New Testament is broken down into 4 volumes so for $4.00 you can buy the whole New Testament. I have not found the Old Testament, but that’s ok I still open up my fine leather HCSB bible now and then to read the Psalms. Anyhow if you happen to own an iPad I highly recommend you give this a try. You only have to invest .99 cents to give it a try. Also if you don’t own an iPad you can still purchase the printed version as well.
iPad releases updates for Pages and Keynote
Check out the latest updates for iPad Pages and Keynote. When in landscape mode you could not see the toolbar and ruler which was really lame, but they fixed that in this update. Now if they will just add the ability to add footnotes that would be awesome.
New ESV Bible on-line
If you haven’t already check out the new ESV bible on line. It has some nice features, like highlighting, notes, and bookmarks.
Wheaton, IL (May 13, 2010)—-Crossway is pleased to announce the new ESV Online. A key part of Crossway’s ESV Digital initiative, the ESV Online is a powerful and convenient tool giving access to the ESV Bible and other resources for understanding and applying God’s Word.
Free access to the ESV Online is now available by signing up at http://www.esvonline.org. Users are able to customize their own interface, highlight and mark verse numbers, add bookmark ribbons, search the ESV text, and manage personal notes. The free version also includes a variety of daily reading plans and devotional calendars.
Want to try the highly acclaimed ESV Study Bible free? For a limited time, everyone who signs up for an ESV Online account will receive a free 30 day trial access to the ESV Study Bible. Current Online ESV Study Bible users will be contacted via email over the coming weeks and will have their accounts migrated to the ESV Online site with access to all the study notes and resources. The Study Bible module is also available to purchase within the ESV Online platform or for free with the purchase of any print edition of the ESV Study Bible.
In addition to the above, Crossway is developing many more ESV Online modules to enhance the study of God’s Word. Stay tuned for the release of Greek tools, MacArthur study notes, commentaries, Bible Audio recordings in numerous languages, and much more!
Coming this summer, ESV Online users will be able to sync their account with mobile ESV Bible apps so personal highlights and notes can be accessed and updated anywhere.
On The Path 