Great time and wonderful experience!

As of tomorrow I’ll be officially on “vacation,” away from my computers. This means that no updates will take place for the next ten days or so either here or at the website. Also, no comments will be approved until I get back. Thanks!

I’m traveling to Israel and might be able to post short updates on Tweeter or Facebook from my Pocket PC for my friends and followers.

Accordance Bible Software is making available free podcasts from the iTunes Store. If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can search for “Lighting the Lamp” and download the episode you want or subscribe to future podcasts. Alternatively, you can go directly to the podcast by clicking this link.

These podcasts will revisit the topics covered in the former webinars and add many more subjects in due course.

The different episodes are an excellent way to become acquainted with the many features offered by this sofware, and suitable for both current and potential users.

Update (June 26): Those with no access to iTunes can download the podcasts here.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t blogged much in the last few days. The reason is quite simple: I want to finish some pending reviews. I am currently keeping busy with a review of Accordance and another one of WORDsearch. After that I should be reviewing PC Study Bible and BibleWorks. These are major projects, and take quite a lot of time and energy.

There are other things on my plate, like a few articles on some great tools, more reviews of BibleTime and GnomeSword, ScriptureDirect, Online Bible, BibleSpeak, etc., as well as implementing some new features for the site/blog which aren’t quite ready for prime time yet. Hopefully you will find quite a bit of new material here during 2009, God willing. In the meantime, make yourself at home and consider becoming an active part of BSR by commenting, participating in the forums or sending feedback. Thanks!

Happy New Year to all Bible Software Review readers.

Hope to see you all next year with more reviews and lots of surprises!

Yes, friends, I’ll be out of town until Sunday, God willing. This means that there will be no new posts in the next few days, and that I will not be able to check my email or approve comments or new forum registrations until next week. So, please be patient. It’s not that I’ll be somewhere out in the woods or anything like that. But the whole point is to keep away from any computer during the whole weekend.

Be good and feel free to look around to your heart’s content. There is a lot of material already available. Hope you enjoy it!

I have added a new video embedding feature to the forums. This way, registered users can illustrate their points by linking to a video hosted in any of the most popular sites currently available online, o even record their own videos, tutorials or whatever and link to them (embed them) in the forum. Thus, it is now very easy to start a video forum thread. Why not register and give it a try? Don’t expect other to start one, head over to the forums and introduce yourself, show us how you use your Bible software or demonstrate some useful feature you’ve discovered. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask away and surely there will be knowledgeable people around who will be able to lend you a hand or, at the very least, they’ll try…

I used to have a lot of spam coming from the older contact form on BSR, the blog and, particularly, the forums. Everyday I would face the prospect of deleting lots and lots of messages and weeding out the valid comments. It got so bad that I decided to closed the forums until I could find a solution. But this is all old hat now!

The spam filter plugin for WordPress (Akismet) takes good care of the blog, whereas the free reCAPTCHA service blocks 100% of the spam bots elsewhere (i.e., site and forums). As a result, I don’t have to waste any time at all sorting messages or activating accounts. It’s a wonderful feeling!

Incidentally, this is one of the main reasons we don’t have a huge amount of registered users at the BSR forums yet. Those who do register are real people with a real interest in Bible software. The other reason, of course, is that we have reopened the forums just recently, and it takes time to build a community of users who get in the habit of “hanging around” and participating in the discussions on a regular basis. So, I do invite you to take a look and register. It won’t take much effort to do it (for humans, that is), and you will have a nice opportunity to interact with other users and Bible software developers. Also, keep in mind that there are some subjects you won’t find here (or, at least, not in much detail), that are dealt at some length in the forums. See this new discussion starter thread as an example.

A reader reports that he is having problems entering the site’s URL manually (i.e., http://www.bsreview.org) or any of its subdomains (/blog, /forum, and so on). Internet Explorer 7 (under Windows XP) displays the banner image and some text, but then an error message pops up (“IE cannot open the Internet site http://www.bsreview.org. Operation aborted.”), and the page cannot be displayed. Also, with Firefox 3 (under Fedora) he is unable to see the New Topic button when he logs into the forums.  And this is all happening from a Comcast connection.

Now, I cannot reproduce any of these problems. The site, the blog and the forums have been extensively tested under IE (versions 6 and 7), Firefox (versions 2 and 3), and Safari, and found to work just fine, as far as I can tell. Since I have not received any other reports from visitors about display problems, or any other problem for that matter, would you mind reporting back to me what your experience browsing the site is like? If you do, it would be helpful to know your OS and browser, and you can either leave a comment here or contact me directly. I will update this entry as I receive your feedback. Thanks a lot!

Update (August 11): The issue is fixed now. Some obscure configuration setting related to the custom style I am using for the forums was the culprit. Everything else seems to be working as it should. Let me know if you come across any further glitches.

Bible Software Review forums are now open, and I am hopeful that the new anti-spam measures will keep spammers away. The goal is to build a strong community of Bible software users and developers where people can interact with one another, so please feel free to register and participate. Your comments and ideas will no doubt benefit others and, as usual, there is an Announcements section for official press releases.

Among the many new features is the ability to actually write in Greek and Hebrew quite easily, add attachments to your posts, show images, etc. Also, keep in mind that other forums will be open as needed. Why not give them a test run and discover all the potential they hold?

Meanwhile, do let me know if something is not working properly. There have been so many changes in the last few days that it is difficult to get it all right the first time. Please be patient as I process registrations. Believe it or not, I do sleep every now and again

Finally, I would appreciate it (in fact, we all would) if you use your real name, rather than some cryptic nickname, if at all possible. Thanks!