Written by: Jayson Bradley

The Logos software development team has a large set of coding guidelines that have evolved over the years. We record them all on an internal wiki, each in its own article. The scope of each guideline varies widely; some guidelines give broad advice, and others indicate a particular coding style for a particular language.

Why do we have coding guidelines? To encourage the writing of good code. But what is good code? My favorite description of good code can be found in an MSDN Magazine article by the late Paul DiLascia. In his End Bracket article titled “What Makes Good Code Good?” he explains that

Written by: Dony & Kathryn Donev

BibleTech 2009 was a blast. To get there we drove our 1993 Volvo 940 some 8,000 miles from Atlanta to Seattle via Chicago and Mount Rushmore and back through California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Two oil changes, one tire change, over 30 days, 20 cities, 10 ministry events and one trip toward revival. Two big mistakes: did not have chains for the South Dakota blizzard and did not blog the trip …

No mistakes this year. We will be blogging our trip form Atlanta to San Hose and back via BibleTech’s official blog site at: http://www.bibletechconference.com/blog/

On Twitter follow @bibliata

For detail reports of the ministry events along the way subscribe to RSS on www.cupandcross.com

For the use of our Volvo on this trip bookmark www.ourVolvo.com

Watch out, San Hose, we are on our way.
See you at Bible Tech or … BUST

All pictures made on Nokia 5800XM courtesy of the Mobile Ministry Magazine

Written by: Mobile Ministry Magazine

As a lead-in to my presentation at BibleTech, I’d like to talk something about the dilemma that we are sometimes presented with as technologists who also share a “moving faith.” That is, we are constantly looking at the output of our inputs through the lens of going to someone (evangelism), teaching someone something, or building a replica of Christ that is context-sensitive to the times and seasons they live in (discipleship). I’ve seen in my 12 saved years of life that much of how we go about this – from a technologists’ point of view – is siloed to one of those three areas, and usually over-saturated with everything except the solution.

What goes into how we determine to use the available technology at hand in order to meet the Gospel-centered needs of the real and virtual communities in which we live?

This probably has a good bit to do with how we’ve developed culturally. We see input equaling output. Put in “x amount” of hard work  and get “y amount” of reward. We study and observe high level trends, but only a few are motivated to go beyond the horizon to something different – which could be better or worse – and too often found ourselves actually going backwards in view of trends.

How do we build on top of the foundations of our faith, respecting what/whom went before us while creating identity in Him due to our different times/circumstances?

This dilemma presents itself in how we use Internet and mobile, social networks and educational software, and in general, how we view going to church versus being the church. The technologist who chooses to minister has to observe these silos and find ways to enabling the Gospels to go to others while teaching several perspectives while raising up proficient persons to lead for the next paradigm changes.

How can we enable the next generations of servant-leaders, when we have people unable to read the present to be current ones?

Admittedly, this is difficult without some focused approach towards cultural and spiritual studies. And this is surely not as doable given the oft-quoted high illiteracy rates even amongst those outside of the Body. There’s got to be an emphasis on all of these areas. A respect to the content (Word) and the context (current times) that goes beyond merely something semantic, shiny, or even accessible.

How do we walk in step with the Holy Spirit?

Living the Great Commission in a siloed technological world is a problem. And the solution isn’t as simple as another technology media/medium or social do-hickey. The dilemma starts with our perceptions of where its possible for people to engage God through Christ Jesus as we live with them. And the solution is clear when people live “by God through any tech-means necessary.” The concept of “go, teach, disciple” isn’t just how we display Christ, but how they display Him when we empower them to. Its both personal and communal. Its living by the moment, and preparing appropriately for the moment(s) that will be. Its not Mac or PC, Internet or mobile, mega or house – it is something that looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels like God Himself is walking amongst us.

How we do this within our technical spheres means understanding lanes and gifts, but also yielding to the Holy Spirit. We have to have the body, mind and spirit in tune with the Father, Word, and Spirit. Every bit and byte has to both sound like something God coded, and lead someone into being reformatted by His divine purpose.

How do you know when you are in that non-siloed place? When people eat from the fruit of your bits and bytes and look unto God as the bringer of their salvation.

As you move into living into a digital context both online and offline, be in step with His leading and the context of tech will always fall on good soil.

Written by: Mobile Ministry Magazine

Wish that I could take credit for the title, but this belonged to someone else. And their post on the subject is of the kind of thinking and assessment that we must do often. Here’s a snippet:

The reason is quite simple and something I did not quite realize until my friend pointed it out to me. People are increasingly using technology not out of choice but out of pressure. And there are a lot of people who are simply addicted to it, they need to check their Twitter feed, Facebook profile and mailboxes every few minutes and see what is happening, because it’s the “in thing” and also because of the constant pressure of being available ‘online’.

Read the rest of Enabled or Enslaved by Technology at Aditya Singhvi’s Phones blog.

I’d also like to call attention to my comment as it directs this post towards this blog a bit more appropriately:

…my faith is the filter that I use. Its the discipline towards being a Christian that I use as the main filter for determining the value of the technology, its connective need/want, and the implication. Can’t say that I’m always perfect in my application, but like living the rest of life through a faith-based filter, there’s a lot of walking forward, backward, repenting, and relearning.

Assess, but also use your filter.

This post was originally posted by Antoine on Mobile Ministry Magazine

Written by: Sean Boisen

Time spent on the web can be oh-so tedious if you’re constantly cutting things from one page and pasting them elsewhere just to get to another, related page. Someday Linked Data may make this all better, but until then, we all get by with helpful tricks.

Bookmarklets are one essential weapon in the arsenal of the web-info-warrior. Usually they’re little JavaScript programs stored as a bookmark in Firefox, providing one-click access to some simple functionality like looking things up elsewhere, resizing your window, etc. I’ve blogged previously about bookmarklets to find local library sources for a book on an Amazon page (or PaperBackSwap).

I dusted off my bookmarklet skills this past week and came up with some nifty tools that i wanted to share.

First off, imagine you’re looking at a website with Bible references whose benighted author somehow failed to include RefTagger. So rather than a nice pop-up with the text of the reference, or even a helpful link to that text on some Bible site, you’re just looking at a inanimate, unlinked string: boo. The Bible Reference Bookmarklet to the rescue! Simply select the text of the reference, click the bookmarklet, and you’ll be whisked off to that reference at Bible.Logos.com. If you haven’t selected any text first, you get a dialogue box asking for it.

To get this goodie in Firefox, first make sure the Bookmarks Toolbar is showing (View > Toolsbars > Bookmarks Toolbar must be checked). I’d love to give you a link to just drag onto the toolbar, but i don’t seem to be able to get the code past WordPress. So go to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks, and select Organize > New Bookmark. Give it a useful name like “Bible Reference Lookup”, and paste the code below in Location field.

javascript:(function(){%20function%20getSearchString%20(promptString)%20{%20s%20=%20null;
if%20(document.selection%20&&%20document.selection.createRange)
%20{%20s%20=document.selection.createRange().text;%20}%20
else%20if%20(document.getSelection)%20{%20s=%20document.
getSelection();%20}%20
if%20(!%20(s%20&&%20s.length))%20{%20s%20=prompt(promptString,'');%20}
%20return%20s;%20}%20searchString%20=%20getSearchString
('Bible%20Reference%20to%20look%20up%20:');%20
if%20(searchString%20!=%20null)%20{%20if(searchString.length)
%20{%20location%20='http://bible.logos.com/#ref='+escape(searchString);%20}%20
else%20{%20location%20='http://bible.logos.com/';%20}%20}%20%20})();


After you’ve clicked ok, you should see it on your toolbar.

You can do similar tricks for a wide variety of strings that you just want to look up elsewhere (i discovered one here while writing this post that lets you look up articles on Wikipedia). This isn’t fundamentally different from copying the string into a search box: but sometimes it’s more convenient.

Descending into more esoteric purposes (to give you ideas for your own bookmarklets): as part of an earlier post on Tools for Personal Knowledge Management, i mentioned my use of TiddlyWiki for quick organization of hyperlinked notes. Like other wiki software, TiddlyWiki has its own link syntax, that looks like

[[Link text | URL]]

When linking to lots of other web pages, i was getting tired of copying the URL, pasting that in, then typing the square brackets, link text, vertical bar, and more square brackets, all in the right format. Wouldn’t it be more convenient to just construct this expression from the title of the page and its URL, rather than having to type it myself? YES! and the TiddlyWiki Page Link bookmarklet does just that, putting the result in a little pop-up window where a triple-click selects the whole thing, ready to copy and paste into your tiddlywiki (and tailor as desired: the title isn’t always what you want, but it’s often easier to edit and throw things out rather than type afresh). This one you can just drag to your bookmarks toolbar and use right away.

TiddlyWiki Page Link

Also, i’ve switched to a much better library lookup bookmarklet (and a service to help you create one for your local library) from WorldCat. Among other things, it generates the list of all the different ISBNs that might exist for a title (which can be very long indeed), and when there are many, it provides links for alternate searches in case the first group comes up empty handed.

Some other cool bookmarklets in my collection include:

• CiteULike Popup Post and kin to make it easy to add (certain kinds of) articles to your reading list management. Adds more value for sources whose structure it understands.
• Show del.icio.us citations of the current URL (you can find it there)
• Resize your browser window to 1024 x 768 (if you want to see how a page will look on a smaller monitor or projector): the bookmarklet follows, just drag to your toolbar. 1024 x 768
• A CSS validator for the current page: see Pete Freitag’s page.

Hat tips:

• Jon Udell who popularized the Library Lookup idea
• Bookmarklets.com
• Pete Freitag’s collection, which were easily modifiable for my purposes above.

This post originally appeared on Blogos

Written by: Mobile Ministry Magazine

In some ways, this piece is framed as a part 2 to the post titled “Responding to the Pope’s Message.” Think of it as a call-to-action before action is needed kind of post.

In the summers of 2002, 2003, and 2004, I taught a few summer classes for the Upward Bound program at Millersville University. One class was about using PDAs as a function of time management, the other was a multimedia and web design class. In the last summer of my teaching, the PDA class was swapped out for teaching a class on developing and learning how to navigate the Internet. In this class, I walked the students how to do things such as evaluate web sources when they are doing research, how to use keywords for searching, how to setup and investigate domain names, and how to create simple web sites.

Now, I started teaching the classes because I wanted to see the potential of mobile in education. What happened though is that I began to understand what it was that students were getting in respect to the technological side of their education. And to be honest, I’m largely self-taught when it comes to tech; so knowing what they were getting would better prepare me for those whom I’d encounter in the world outside of me.

What I saw in that last summer is that students were ill-prepared to deal with the realities of a connected culture. The university library was still teaching – yes in 2004 – that you only knew a veritable web resource because it had a .org or .edu name on the URL. There was little to no understanding at all towards this sphere at all. And that was very scary.

Coming into MMM, one of the statements that gets thrown this way is the idea that learning and applying the Bible will continue in the same ways that it always has. That despite the technology, that there will be the same core skills. And to some extent that’s correct and incorrect at the same time.

In this piece at the Britannica blog the question is asked if technology is going to evolve to the point where the written language will become obsolete? And if it does render the written language as such, what are the skillsets that would have to be understood – not only in education, but all of life – towards maneuvering this ultra-connected space?

A few items from this piece jumped out, but this one really nailed things:

…It’s not enough for new devices, systems, and gizmos to simply be more expedient than what they are replacing… We owe it to posterity to demand proof that people’s communications will be more intelligent, persuasive, and constructive when they occur over digital media.” When confronted by the statistic that fewer than 50% of high-school seniors could differentiate between an objective Web site and a biased source, Norvig replied that he did perceive it as a problem, and astonishingly suggested that the solution was to get rid of reading instruction altogether. “We’re used to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic; now we should be teaching these evaluation skills in school,” Norvig told me. “Some of it could be just-in-time. Education, search engines themselves should be providing clues for this…

Framed in the spirit of this site’s mission (the intersection of faith and mobile technology), we could say (as framed in the reflective post some days ago):

So what does it mean to have believers who have instant access to multiple resource and communities, who seek answers to the questions of faith and life, evaluating sources in real-time through online and offline relationships, instead of waiting for a sermon or preacher to smooth the message.

I’m speaking of this connected space where the conversation is just as important as the reading itself. What are we doing to prepare religion/faith for that kind of transformation? Or rather, should be we preparing for that kind of transformation?

The Word of God – the Bible – is the probably most consistent piece of oral/written/digital communication used by Westernized nations. Its literally the thread that holds spiritual, moral, legal, and sociological bonds (am not debating whether a person is a Christian or not, only that the Christian influence has been that pervasive). When the fabric of how we transmit the message of the Gospel is purely digital (text, audio, and video) and native to the generation that is using it, does the way that we teach also get a new pair of clothes?

Let me be clear, I’m not advocating that we change the Bible, traditions of the faith, nor the tenants of local and para-churches. I’m asking – as I sat in a class with kids who are now graduates of college in many cases today – are we teaching Biblical literacy in light of the abilities of the generation, or holding fast to something older, and not so effective, because of some fear of irrelevance?

And if we are on-point in teaching Biblical points and principles correctly for this generation and the one(s) to come, should we be asking the same of the institutions and culture in which we live whom may not have adapted such?

The post quoted here is from Britannica’s Leaning & Literacy in the Digital Age blog series. There’s a lot more that can be said given the depth of materials posted in this series, but I leave it to you the reader to intersect with the entirety of this content.

This post originally appeared on Mobile Ministry Magazine

Written by: Jayson Bradley

A few of our users have had Logos 4 crash on startup with the following exception:

System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException: 'pack://application:Name.xaml'

  value cannot be assigned to property 'Source' of object 'System.Windows.ResourceDictionary'.

  Cannot find DependencyProperty or PropertyInfo for property named 'StringFormat'.

  Property names are case sensitive.

                    

Written by: Drew Haninger

Along with technology blogs and Twitter feeds everywhere, Olive Tree’s office has been buzzing with excitement since Wednesday’s announcement of the new Apple iPad. The iPad is the latest device in the iPhone OS family, a tablet with iPhone’s familiar multi-touch interface, a larger screen, and massive possibilities for expanding what Bible study looks like for mobile devices.

iPad is built on the iPhone OS (operating system), which means that iPhone BibleReader runs on iPad today. Here at Olive Tree, we downloaded the iPad emulator on Wednesday afternoon and got our first glimpse of BibleReader on the iPad’s new larger screen. BibleReader is one of the many apps that will transfer directly to iPad when it ships in March, so you can expect to see BibleReader for iPad available from day one.

But, of course, we’re looking to do more. We’re committed to bringing the best Bible Study experience to iPhone OS, which now includes the iPad. And iPad’s new features give us the room to dream big.

Olive Tree has always specialized in mobile technology, and we’re excited about the iPad because it signals the direction all mobile technology is headed—becoming powerful, flexible, and useful enough to fit more than one category, transcending the current boundaries between mobile computing devices and other computers.

And that’s where BibleReader is headed too. We plan to make the BibleReader experience far more than just reading a book. And we’re glad the new Apple iPad will give us the opportunity to create a deeper experience of the Bible.

Written by: Drew Haninger

We’ve witnessed the release of Amazon Kindle, the Nook, Sony eReader, and other eBook reading devices, and now we’re waiting on the iPad with iBooks, Apple’s new ePublishing outlet. Some Olive Tree users have been wondering: What makes BibleReader different from Kindle and other eBook readers?

The main difference is that BibleReader is tailored to the experience of reading and studying the Bible. BibleReader is Bible-centric technology. In contrast, reviewers have pointed out that Kindle is “dominated by the book metaphor.” Kindle reads and handles almost exactly like a book (and not like a magazine, reference work, newspaper, or website). If all you read is fiction, or linear non-fiction—books where you start on page one and read, page by page, straight through to the end, the way you’d read a novel—then Kindle and other traditional eBook readers may work well for you.

But as anyone who has done any Bible reading or study can tell you, that’s not the way most people interact with their Bibles. Certainly, reading the Bible from cover to cover is a valuable practice, and if you’ve never done it, you should try it at least once. But for many people, daily Bible reading and study takes place in primarily non-linear ways.

And that’s where the specialized features and usability of BibleReader come into play.

• Say you want to open your Bible to a specific place—not just the third chapter of the book of John, but John 3:16 exactly. BibleReader’s Verse Chooser lets you navigate quickly to any verse in the Bible.
• Suppose you wonder how the word “spirit” is used throughout the Bible. BibleReader’s search function lets you look up every occurrence of the word “spirit” in both the Old and New Testaments. And when you scroll through the search results, it takes just one click to open the Bible of your choice to that verse.
• What if you’re reading Nehemiah, and you need more historical background on the Temple and its importance in Jewish culture? BibleReader’s versified commentaries let you switch to the commentary of your choice that opens right to Nehemiah, or wherever you were reading in your Bible.
• BibleReader’s split-screen reading makes commentary or other Bible reference works instantly available as you read—the two screens are linked so your commentary is always open to the right verse. Or you can use split screens to read two different Bible translations side-by-side.
• Many Bibles have additional information like textual notes, cross-references, or Strong’s numbers. BibleReader includes hyperlinked notes that are available with one touch.
• If you make a personal note on a specific verse in the Bible, you can access these notes in any Bible version, tied to the same verse.

While you might not need any of these functions while reading an eBook, reading the Bible is a different story. BibleReader was created with the unique experience of Bible reading in mind, and its features are designed to let you get the most out of your Bible reading and study.

Written by: Wes Allen

Yesterday Google unveiled “Google Buzz.”  A simple way to describe it is that Buzz seems to be the illegitimate child of Facebook and Twitter – squatting in your gmail account.  That’s the the simple way to explain it, but it also gives the wrong impression of what Buzz might just be able to do.  Buzz is attempting to take social networking (Facebook), micro-blogging (Twitter), and location based (four-square or loopt) and wrap it into a simple package.  I’m not sure if they can pull it off, but it’s certainly ambitious.

The HTML 5 mobile Buzz app

I didn’t have access to Buzz in my regular gmail account until late this morning, and if that had been my first encounter with Buzz I’d have to echo my friend Michael’s first buzz update, “i’m sorry, but this won’t replace FB.”  Buzz in gmail is easy to use and update, but it does seem to be nothing more than the aforementioned illicit child of facebook and twitter.  Buzz’s potential simply doesn’t show up there.  On the mobile, however, the potential suddenly appears by the ability to access location-based information.  I find this fascinating.  Google Buzz manages to travel on the path that Twitter paved, but instead of utilizing text messages they’ve created a rich web-app that harnesses HTML 5.  An app that seems to give a better experience than it’s desktop based cousin! Let me show you why I say this.  On the right is the main buzz app window when you access I access it on my iPhone.  It’s very straight forward –  see Buzz updates from people I have asked to follow, along with comments on those updates (which is very “Facebook like”).  Notice, however, the “nearby” button at the top of the screen.  Here’s what it looks like when you select it.

The Nearby window in Google Buzz

Now I have a list of local Buzz updates, which gives me their GPS based location.  I don’t like that aspect of Buzz, I don’t need to know a stranger’s home address, nor do I want strangers to know mine there has to be a way to anonymize this for me to use Buzz with location data.  If I want to display my current location I should be able to do that, as many twitter clients allow you to do, but having that set to default is something I don’t like one bit.  That is a major drawback for me, but at the same time I see some wonderful potential in the “nearby” feature as well.  Next to “Buzz Map” is a listing of businesses and organizations that are near to the current location of the mobile.  When it’s activated this is what comes up in my area.

Nearby locations as discovered by Google Buzz

Buzz pulls information from Google maps and displays it in a list format.  When you click on any of the listings you’re taken to a page where you can “Buzz” about that organization.  That page is shown below.

The first Buzz listing for a local organization

If you activate the “more info” link, you’ll be taken to the listing for that organization as found on Google Maps, like so.

Local listing as shown in Google Buzz

That’s just plain awesome.  The potential for this, if you are part of an organization (say, the pastor of a Church like I am), Google buzz can show people nearby what’s going on in that community and how people are responding to it.  If you set up your organization’s listing in the Google Local Business Center (which I highly recommend) people will see a picture of the organization’s location and any updates that you’ve attached to your entry.  This is the portion of Buzz that most interests me, the merger loopt into their Facebook/Twitter lovechild.  As a way of getting “buzz” going about events and gatherings – this might be a huge win.

This post originally appeared on Painfully Hopeful