Bibleref but no markup

For more than a decade I've wanted an easy way to make Bible references like these: Amos 7:14; Ruth 1:16-17 into links to the Bible or to popup the verses cited, I put a lot of work into doing that for the Amos commentary.

But now... Thanks to the kind people at Logos, who I expect will benefit from their kindness through lots of links like this one, I have been able to add a cool tool to this blog, and my others that automatically takes most Bible references I type and uses Sean's clever Bibleref system to add the verse as a popup, and make the reference a link to the passage. My only disappointment is that apparently it does this without rewriting the source code for the page, so probably Google etc. will not be able to use this semantic markup :( maybe in a later implementation?

Does Zondervan "get it" at last?

John has a link to an interview on Christianity Today with Maureen Girkins, Zondervan’s CEO in the interview she says that Zondervan's singing and dancing all celebrity Audio Bible The Bible Experience was their best-selling Bible in 2007. That should be no surprise to PodBiblers, our un-advertised, read-by-plain-ordinary-people, Bible delivers more than 40,000 audio Bible chapters each month!

They asked her:

Can you tease out an example of how publishing will change?

Wireless phones, which didn't exist 20 years ago, have changed not only the way people communicate but also the way they live. People are going to read, and they're going to read paper for the rest of our lifetimes. But I'm convinced that different distribution for content will change the way we live. We have entered the digital world. It's not like we're just stepping our toe into it. The Bible Experience audio Bible was the best-selling Bible of 2007.

I think we can make some predictions today for how further distribution changes will alter the way we live our Christian life. The spiritual journey many of us have will be changed by the Internet and digital technology. But I'd like a little more time in this discovery process before I can vocalize how.

Now, this is cautious, but much less cautious than print-based publishers usually are! It makes projects like David's for mobile phones or our PodBible relevance visible!

(Audio?) Bible on mobile phones

David Ker, who works in Mozambique - where mobile phones are less expensive to run than NZ, and Internet less available - is putting together a project to make the Bible available in various ways by mobile phone. To listen in, or join the discussion just subscribe to the blog...

Incidentally if you have any knowledge or ideas that can help with making PodBible more accessible to mobile phone users please comment, we have the domain PodBible.mobi but do not yet really know how to use it!

Luke: missing Think | Pray | Do

An attentive and helpful listener has pointed out that Luke 3-13 (i.e. up to date at the time of writing) lack Think|Pray|Do ideas. The backup copies on my laptop also do not have these, just the Bible text. I am travelling (see http://asiabible.wordpress.com), so it will be next month till I am at home and can check to see if we have TPDs prepared and recorded for Luke. So, I'd ask you to supply your own for these weeks! Also if you come up with good ones to either post them as comments to this post, or send them by email to pod at podbible.com then we can use them and have a wider range of contributors!

Sorry about 2nd and 3rd (Bible in a Year)

I am sorry about the mix up with the recordings for the Bible in a Year for the 2nd and 3rd of this month. I put them up from an Internet cafe in Bangkok, while suffering from jetlag and lack of sleep (see here for details of why) and made a mistake. For those who are saving the recordings to use again, I will try to fix it as soon as I can - but where I am now it may take a few days (or even till April if I have not got the necessary files with me :(

Isaiah 53 update

Thanks to a helpful listener, who spotted the mistake and emailed us (pod@podBible.com) I have corrected Isaiah 53 so that it now does have a ThinkPrayDo attached. I have also updated the version in the pre-Christmas readings so that the "chapter" includes the start of the song in Isaiah 52. (If you want just ch. 53 it is available on the Isaiah page. Please, if you spot a bad stumble, a reader's mistake, or some other error like the missing ThinkPrayDo, let us know so we can correct it!

Christmas readings

In a day or two (depending on your timezone) we'll be starting a series of chapters leading up to Christmas. This is not a real Advent podcast, since we have not tried to cover the whole season of Advent, fortnight or so... Astute listeners may also have noticed that a few chapters seem to have crept in already from Matthew and Luke. The problem was that to make these chapters appear on the days for Christmas they had to disappear from the regular listing of the gospels - and I did not want to supply these gospels without the Christmas story in the days before Christmas... the solution was to list them twice, but then they appeared in the RSS feed... unless you are a super-geek you just can't win... anyway seasonal greetings to you all.