Alright, I’ve found my replacement for Google Docs (though Google Docs is still pretty cool). The site is called A.nnotate. The jist: Upload PDF’s or .docs. They are converted to PDF and available for absolutely anyone (who you invite) to annotate with notes.

This is a FREE service for those with minimal needs— or you can buy more space if your need is a little greater.

Why do I think this is so cool, and how can it help you? A few reasons:

1. I don’t use Microsoft Word nor do I care to. However, this makes file swapping with others a little difficult.
2. PDF is the best choice, in my opinion, because you can embed fonts. PDFs also ensure that whatever you have in your word processor of choice looks exactly like what the PDF looks like. This simply does not happen when moving from one word processor to another
3. Adobe Reader, which is the program most PC users think of when they here PDF, isn’t exactly user friendly— I’m not even sure you can make notes with just the Reader! This gives you a free and easy collaborative tool.

All in all, I am very happy with A.nnotate. I have my supervisor (the Birdman) set up to use it so he can comment on drafts of my thesis work. I hope others find it useful too.

Enjoy!

I received a notice by email of a new journal in biblical and theological studies which will be launching its first issue in ‘08. Below is the content of the email for your info…..

THE ORTHODOX CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF BIBLICAL STUDIES (OCABS) is pleased to announce the launching of its new, on-line academic journal, The Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies (JOCABS).

The mission of JOCABS is to promote scholarship in biblical studies, homiletics, and religious education among Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians around the world.

Although submissions in English are preferred thus ensuring greater accessibility, academic papers in other languages (especially Arabic, Armenian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish) will be considered by our multi-lingual editorial board and its international associates.

Articles may be submitted in the following areas:
Old Testament and Cognate Studies. Including (but not limited to) critical studies in Hebrew Bible; Septuagint; Pseudepigrapha; Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture; Syro-Palestinian Archaeology.
New Testament and Cognate Studies. Including (but not limited to) critical studies in New Testament; Early Christian Literature; Apocryphal Literature and Traditions; Classical Studies; Archaeology of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
The Bible in Homiletics and Christian Education. Including theoretical and methodological studies dedicated to the practical applications of biblical scholarship to both preaching and pedagogy.
Book Reviews. Submissions of critical reviews of books related to the field of biblical studies will be accepted and invited.
JOCABS is committed to promoting scholarship among scholars and graduate students and encourages them to submit papers to its peer-reviewed process. The first issue will appear in the Summer of 2008, and semiannually thereafter.

For additional information, please contact Dr. Nicolae Roddy, at nroddy@creighton.edu or Fr. Vahan Hovhanessian, at vartabed@stnersess.edu.

To submit an article online, please visit http://www.ocabs.org/journal.

My last post highlighted a new and exciting feature of Google Books - the ability to create your own ‘library’ of google books which are searchable.
I took the time to import a sizeable list of books that I own into my Google Books library. Frankly, I was a little disappointed at how few of my books are available on Google Books. The majority of the books have no preview whatsoever, just the book details! I can’t speak for other disciplines, but it seems that the biblical studies publishers are being a little stingy on the Google Books front!
Now here is why I hope the publishers in biblical studies will start to rethink their position on Google Books: the search has now reached the point that it is going to be very very helpful for people who have already purchased your books. Although my enthusiasm has been squashed a bit, I can only hope that one day I’ll be able to use my Google Books library to do a full text search through my own library, find what I was looking for, and pull the book of my shelf for research. This is such a promising research utility and such a great use of technology. As far as I understand it, it is the publishers that can make this happen.
I sympathize somewhat with publishers on this topic, after all the point is for people to purchase the books, not have free access to them online. But the options in Google Books seem pretty accommodating to me. You can have the whole book indexed, but it can only be viewed in the “snippet” view. This still gives the flexibility of full text searching while not allowing people to read the book online.
So Biblical studies publishers, the ball is in your courts now. Jump on the Google Books bandwagon and you’ll hear the applause of your buyers! Cheers!

It is great to see that Google listens to the little people.

A while back I emailed Google and told them that they need to make an API system for Google Books, and that they should allow users to create their own little ‘bookshelf’ of Google books that they can then search. They emailed back and said it was a great idea that a few others have also suggested.

The API system isn’t here (yet), but you can now create your own library of google books as long as you have an account. This is very cool! Once you do a search, you will have an option to “add it to your library”. Once you do that, the list of books are available on a dedicated page accessible along the top of the page. From there, you can choose to search just those specific books. How unbelievably great is that!

This is going to be a very valuable resource. I’ll tell you how I am specifically going to use it right now. As many of you know I’ve started my PhD. So I’m going to populate this google books library with titles related to my dissertation topic. That way, I can do ‘in-text’ searches of the books. Now if all those nitpicky publishers would just get on the google books bandwagon, we would be talking real full text search. Unfortunately, the amount of material shown in the books is subject to the publisher.

Wait, it gets even better! If you are smart you use bibliographic management software or at least have a big excel or word file with all your books. Take all the ISBN’s of your books, and import the books straight into your google books library!

Happy researching!

books.google.com

UPDATE 1

I apologize for my lack of blogging lately, I’ll try to kick it up a notch soon. I have two book blurbs in the pipeline as well as a few other ideas stirring.

I have been busy teaching my first official class as a prof. It is tons of fun teaching Greek so far, and my students are responding positively to my use of technology in the class. What all do I do, you may ask? Well:

• First and foremost, my university is in the processing of switching their LMS to moodle, and a number of us are testing it out this year. It is fantastic. So I do exercise checkups online, as well as distribute class materials (btw, I’m using Gerald Stevens, New Testament Greek Primer Cascade Books. It is great!)
• I deliver all lessons in Keynote (Mac’s presenter software). I also use Omnidazzle to scribble on the screen when doing parsing and translation. Then once I’m done I upload it as a PDF for them to have.
• I wrote some absolutely terrible songs that nontheless have helped them learn their paradigms. I had to swallow my pride for this part. p.s. Don’t ask, I’m not giving them out
• I started creating lesson recaps. Utilizing Mac’s Keynote recording feature, I basically sit in my office and go through the presentation again, albeit quicker, and speak over the presentation. Then I export it to quicktime and upload it to moodle.
• I encourage the students to use Ken Penner’s Flash!Pro software for vocabulary memorization
• I also read the chapter vocabulary and place them online as mp3’s to help the auditory learners with vocab

I have worked hard this month to get my lessons all prepared because, as some of you know, I’m now officially a p/t PhD student with none other than our biblioblogging Birdman himself, Mike Bird. My Dissertation is on David and davidic typology in the gospel of Matthew. Fun times!

UPDATE 2:
There have been a few new blogs that have come to light in the past few weeks. Some have just started, some I just learned about. These are the four latest to be added to the Deinde Biblioblog search: Sermon to the Hebrews, Notes on 1 Peter, agaphseis, and Confessions of a Bible Junkie.

There was also a big new website announcement, in my mind anyway. Bulletin of Biblical Research (BBR) now has an upgraded website, including free PDF or .doc downloads of the articles. As a proponent of open source scholarship, I did a backflip (figuratively) when I heard about this. A great journal that is now open to the whole world — well, up to 2004 anyway, but a 3 year buffer is not bad at all.
Anyway I say all of that to let you know that BBR, both citations and the full text, are now indexed in the Deinde Journal Search. One other significant addition I have made to this search is the new JETS archive at the Reclaiming the Mind website.

And as to final Deinde search, the web search, I have updated it so that it now searches every site or page that is connected to the NTGateway as well as iTanakh.

That’s all! Cheers!

In case any Deinde readers missed the post on Thought on Antiquity, Ben stumbled across an awesome resource. I large portion of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca in PDF files, typed in Greek unicode!! How awesome is that! This means, if your using something like Google Desktop or a Mac-addict using DEVONthink that you can be searching for Greek words in PG.
I found this directory page to be the best place to grab the texts. Enjoy!

I just found a very cool and free online backup system. It is so good, that I knew I had to blog about it immediately. It is called Mozy.com

Every user gets 2GB of backup space, and you can sign up for unlimited space for only $4.95 a month. Free is a price that we all can handle!

But even better than that, it comes with a backup program for both PC and Mac. It allows you to choose which files and folders to sync, including your emails and addressbook if you so choose. I can’t get over how good it is, and can’t believe it is free!

Check out Mozy here.